Cage Match!
sorry/not sorry, we could not resist
Greetings, Dames Nation! This week we have a special issue dedicated to the career and artistry of the great and strange screen artist we all know and love and mock and love to mock and mock as a gesture of love, Nicolas Cage.
Film critic and certified Cage expert Keith Phipps – his book Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career – is available at book emporia and libraries everywhere – very kindly sat down with us to talk about Cage’s best and most underrated performances, his still-enthusiastic approach to acting, and the incredible longevity of his career.
Keith’s publisher has kindly offered to send free copies of Age of Cage to two lucky readers. Complete this form to be entered in the random drawing. We’ll pick the two winners next Friday.
Read on, and please do let us know what your favorite Cage performances are!
Karen Corday: All right. The first question is a pretty general one: Why Nicolas Cage, Keith?
Keith Phipps: Well, “Why not Nicolas Cage?” I guess, would be my answer. The inspiration for the book was really seeing the film Mandy, here at the Music Box Theater in Chicago, when it ran in 2018. I was kind of fishing around for book ideas, and trying to figure out what would make a good story.
I realized that this was someone I'd been seeing, watching for most of my life, and he was someone who could still surprise me. Here’s someone doing something new and unexpected in a really interesting film [now]. I kind of realized that he'd been with me since Raising Arizona, which is the first Nicolas Cage film I saw in the theater and the first Coen Brothers movie I saw, the first time I saw Holly Hunter or John Goodman in a movie and these are all people that I kind of have followed in one way or another since then.
I started thinking about his career in general, and how in every year, he fits in differently or he doesn't fit in. Each sort of different stage of show business or movie-making life kind of gives you a different Nicolas Cage in one way or another. So, it came together from that. I thought it would be fun to spend a year watching Nicolas Cage movies, and it did prove to be fun. But also it was something I could use as a window into a bigger picture.
Sophie Brookover: Now that the book is complete and out in the world, what is your sense of various turning points in Cage’s career as an actor? Where do you pinpoint when he went from being the guy who makes you think “Oh, I really like seeing him in things”, to then being Oscar-winner and beyond? He just remains in the public eye some 40 years into his career, I’m curious about how you map that trajectory.
Keith: In the 90s, there were two turning points. Winning the best actor Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas was one and then becoming an action star the next year was another. He turned into a big star at that point. Prior to that, Moonstruck was a big turning point. When he made Moonstruck he was known -- he'd been in Raising Arizona. His name’s on the poster for that. And he'd been in Valley Girl, he'd been in Birdy, and Peggy Sue Got Married, but Moonstruck was the one that was really his first brush with big stardom. It’s a big romantic comedy that became a hit. And I think he feels a little uncomfortable with that and the film he makes next is Vampire’s Kiss. That one’s a real experience. It was like his acting laboratory that he'd drawn on the years after that. [Note: he infamously actually ate a cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss, a method acting move for which he would later voice regret.] I think that's another turning point where he becomes an even more fearless actor after that. Then the action star phase comes to kind of define him for the public, although it's fairly short, and not necessarily all that representative of his work as a whole.
Another one really would be the movie called Trespass. You haven't seen it because no one's seen it, and it's not perfectly good. But it was his first film that premiered on VOD and in theaters at the same time. It also came out as his financial and legal troubles came to light and is the beginning of the wilderness VOD/Redbox phase of his career. More recently, I think Pig is a turning point. I've been reminded that here is a unique screen presence with a lot of range, who in the right role is as good as anyone you could imagine. I can't imagine anyone else playing that part in Pig, it’s just an extraordinary performance and not the sort of performance we usually associate with Nicolas Cage, either.
Karen: Who do you consider to be his forefathers and or mothers when it comes to acting?
Keith: He was hugely inspired by James Dean; he really talks a lot about East of Eden, particularly the really emotional moments. He's really quick to say German expressionism. Things like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu so you get this big style of acting that really depends on like, physical gestures and facial contortions. You can see it all over his work. I mean, Face Off is a film you can watch with the sound off and still get that performance. He’s cited Jerry Lewis as an inspiration and he got to play opposite him in a movie called The Trust which is kind of fun to see. The weirdest inspiration he'll cite is someone like Bill Bixby who was the star of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and played the Hulk’s alter ego in [the TV show] The Incredible Hulk -- really a quintessential normal suburban dad guy. It’s a neat thing to see him reference because he does do that well. I think it tends to get kind of forgotten, but he spent most of the early 80s playing normal characters in movies like Honeymoon In Vegas and It Could Happen to You and he's really quite good at that, too.
Sophie: This leads into our next question, which has to do with his keen interest in and devotion to oddness. One of his early movies that I've seen the most times is Moonstruck. It’s an enormously appealing performance and it prefigures some of his weirder stuff because it's so over the top and operatic, which was not the vibe for romantic leads at the time. But he's so fearless about it! Do you think that's rooted in something in particular -- German expressionism or something else?
Keith: Yeah, it's not the vibe now either. It's rare you get a romantic lead introduced angry and yelling about his life (as Ronnie Cammareri does in Moonstruck). But yeah, opera was a big, big touchstone for that performance. I think his early performances capture what he does really well. No matter how big he goes with Peggy Sue Got Married with the crazy hair and the weird voice or Raising Arizona with a big cartoonish physical performance, or Moonstruck with the operatic gestures, these are all guys that feel like real people. He starts with the humanity, and builds the big gestures on top of that. It doesn't always work, but when it does, because we believe this is a real character, he gets a license to pile excessive gestures on top of that. I think that's the key to unlocking why he’s effective as an actor.
Karen: He’s now paid them off, but what do you think about his notoriously ridiculous debts? Have they been a downfall or another opportunity for him to build the general Cage mystique and be even weirder and more iconoclastic?
Keith: I think there's a little bit of that, and you can see it in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which kind of ribs him for his financial excesses. It’s always kind of distorted perceptions of him because that's one of the first things you think of with him. It certainly led to a decade of nonstop work and one film after another without necessarily having the luxury of being all that selective about them. The ‘10s are filled with a lot more interesting films than you might think. It’s very rare that no matter how bad the movie is, though, that you feel like he's bringing less than his full commitment to the part. Ithink also in some of them, especially within the last few years, he felt like he's had license to just kind of go wild and do things like Jiu Jitsu where he basically wears Dennis Hopper’s costume from Apocalypse Now. There’s another movie called Primal where he was a big game hunter, and “Just have fun with this” seemed to be his operating instructions on that one.
Sophie: His Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas is something that a lot of people would point to as his best performance. Do you consider that to be like the apex of him as an actor, or do you think he's gotten even better since then? Are there any lost opportunities for more Oscars or performances you think deserved more acclaim than they got?
Keith: I do love that performance. I think he and Elisabeth Shue are both really great in that movie, both just heartbreaking, and I find them to be kind of hard to watch because of it. But I wouldn't call it an apex at all. I mean, I really do think that Pig from last year was as good as anything he's ever done. And in Adaptation his performances are both really remarkable too. [Note: He played twin brothers in Adaptation.] And I can see why those were nominated for Oscars, but I love a few overlooked ones. I really love Matchstick Men. It’s a Ridley Scott movie in which he plays a con artist opposite Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman. He has OCD or Tourette's; we’re never really given specifics, but it's another one where there are a lot of big moments and some tics built into the character but you buy him as a real person. I think he was good from the start. Raising Arizona and Moonstruck especially are as good as any performance he’s ever given.
Sophie: Are there other performances post 1995 that you think are underseen or underrated?
Keith: Yeah, absolutely. I also love him in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, the Werner Herzog movie that’s not a remake and not a sequel to Bad Lieutenant. The trailer is filled with all these big moments from it like hallucinating iguanas and imagining breakdancing ghosts. And like, all that's in the movie, it's not false advertising, but in the context, I think it's a fairly harrowing and moving story of someone who's done a lot of bad in the world and who has a sort of spark that makes him want to maybe see if he can turn his life around, and the film questions to what degree that's even possible. Like, it's wild! I mean, it's Cage working with Werner Herzog, two people who are very comfortable to just try wild things on the fly. But I think it really comes together quite well. I love that movie.
Mandy is a big one. Seeing Mandy provided a spark of inspiration for the book. It's this really intense revenge slash horror film which involves Nicolas Cage fighting a killer religious cult who’s killed his wife. It’s really basic genre fare in its premise, but its execution is just really beautifully done. It’s this tense, kind of dark spell of a movie with with this really raw performance. He understands the needs of a violent thriller, but it's also this really intense movie about loss and mourning. There's a scene in which he's lost his wife. He drinks an entire bottle of vodka in his underwear and starts screaming -- with no cuts, I believe in the filmmaking. You see this with an audience and there's laughter but it's uncomfortable laughter with seeing that much raw emotion, it's not laughing at what he's doing. And you know, that's something I’d never really seen before, so that to me is a remarkable performance.
Karen: What about his recent Reddit AMA? Did you participate? Are there any highlights that you think were especially important from it?
Keith: I didn't participate. I thought it was a really thoughtful AMA. He’s not someone who does a lot of interviews and really rarely interacts directly with fans like that. But you know, he gave really good answers like, what were the standouts for you?
Sophie: There was one I'm gonna mangle a bit, but it was sort of asking him about his growth or trajectory as an actor and he gave this really thoughtful answer that basically amounted to “I take it as seriously now as I did when I was first starting out. I am always trying to improve. I take roles because they are important to me in some way.” It was very thoughtful and I guess a little cliched, but it seemed incredibly sincere, which I don't know what I was expecting, exactly, but I don't think it was that.
Keith: I cannot claim, despite having written the book, to have any great insights into Nicolas Cage and his psyche beyond how he presents himself in the world but I mean, it's really his interest in acting that has been really the constant throughline. If you watch his Oscars acceptance speech, it feels like it's really sincere like, “I know it's not cool to say this, but I just really love acting,” and it's really sweet . He definitely is someone who's trying new things. He's not someone who's just showing up and and beyond that, sometimes finds the ways to make some potentially very dull projects a lot a lot more interesting just by his investment in them.
I almost feel like we're headed out of this space, with Pig and with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent but you know, for a while, it wasn't clear how sincere some of the fandom was. Like, are we just making fun of Nicolas Cage, do we love Nicolas Cage, are we just Gen Xers who are confused and don't really understand how those emotions can be different from one another? [Note: OH MY GOD. THE BIGGEST BOTH/AND AND TRUE CALLOUT IN INTERVIEW HISTORY???] You know what, this is just a really interesting guy. Not every actor who works as long as he does and keeps working remains an object of interest for people. Cage has. I think he, at least, appreciates the fact that people are paying attention and, you know, that came through in the AMA.
As they say in the pictures, FIN.
Our warmest thanks to Keith for this warm & insightful conversation! Don’t forget, you can win a free copy of Age of Cage! Fill out this form to be entered in the random drawing. We’ll pick the two winners next Friday.
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