In short
Nicolas Cage discusses his acting philosophy (seeking truth in dark emotions, taking risks, inviting negative reactions), his “art synthesis” method (pulling from other art forms like music, painting, and comic styles), and his new TV series Spider Noir—where he plays Ben Reilly, a 1930s New York private investigator who’s also a web-slinging superhero. He also addresses “memification” (how memes preserve emotional snapshots of his performances) and how he’s compartmentalized his life to avoid impulsive behavior while raising his toddler.
Guests
David Marchese (New York Times interviewer/host of The Interview). Nicolas Cage (guest; actor).
Key claims
Cage says positive emotions can be harder to access than dark ones; he uses compartmentalization to “turn on” required moods. He believes negative reactions mean the work isn’t fake. He frames Spider Noir as a Lichtenstein-like collision of classic noir reverence (Bogart, Robinson, Lorre) with Spider-Man/pop icon energy, designed to hook teens into black-and-white film history.
Notable examples
Bad Lieutenant with Werner Herzog; Joe (using a newspaper story about a child attacked by painted dogs); Peggy Sue Got Married (cartoonish voice/appearance risk); Vampire’s Kiss, Raising Arizona (Looney Tunes-style H.I.); Dream Scenario and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (memes/public perception); Gunslingers voice (channeling Miles Davis); childhood TV as his “savior.”
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VONicolas Cage: A Unique Artist
0:02 to 0:29
A discussion on Nicolas Cage's artistry and eclectic career.
“For a limited time, when you get a new Apple Card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to$250 daily cash.”
Nicolas Cage: A Unique Artist
0:45 to 2:22
A discussion on Nicolas Cage's artistry and eclectic career.
“That style, which has led to his work frequently being memed on social media, also pulls from other films, music, and painting.”
Going to Dark Places in Art
2:22 to 3:42
Cage reflects on the emotional risk involved in his performances.
“Nick, thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”
Motivations from Real Events
3:42 to 6:13
Cage shares how real-life events influence his performances.
“corners of your memory or of your thoughts in order to convey a truth in a scene that is perhaps disturbing or dangerous.”
The Challenge of Positive Emotions
6:13 to 8:16
Cage discusses the difficulty of portraying positive emotions authentically.
“They often talk about it in the context of darker emotions.”
Risks and Rewards in Performance
8:16 to 11:12
Cage talks about the risks he took in earlier performances and their outcomes.
“I knew full well that that was not going to go over very well.”
Postmodern Elements in Acting
11:12 to 14:01
Exploring Cage's innovative techniques and influences in film.
“I mean, I was really struggling on that one because I had a very specific vision of what I wanted.”
The Artistic Influence of Warhol and Lichtenstein
14:01 to 17:47
Explore how Nicolas Cage draws inspiration from pop art icons for his film performances.
“and I like to take from places, whether it's in film performance, like you mentioned Bruce Lee, or whether it's in graphic art or any other art, Stockhausen.”
The Role of Spider-Man in Art Synthesis
17:48 to 19:16
Cage discusses his vision for Spider Noir and its connection to classic cinema.
“But, for example, with Jen Salkey at Amazon, I went over to her house and we all sat there.”
The Impact of Television on Nicolas Cage
19:17 to 22:26
Cage reflects on how television shaped his desire to become an actor during his childhood.
“So tarantulas, well, I even learned a little bit about the movement of spiders, and I put that in the script.”
Show all 25 chapters
Childhood Adventures: Digging Holes and Jumping Bikes
22:27 to 24:12
Cage shares amusing and dangerous childhood stories that shaped his character.
“And I could go and escape in the TV by watching shows or I could go in the backyard.”
Pushing the Limits of Screen Performance
24:13 to 28:00
Cage discusses his experiences and challenges in performance, considering future directions.
“So there was an interview just a couple years ago where somehow the subject of sort of retirement came up.”
The Dilemma of Commercials vs. Artistic Integrity
28:00 to 30:01
Nicolas Cage discusses his aversion to doing commercials and the pressures of the film industry.
“I want to do this other movie, but they pushed and they're not sure they're going to go.”
Embracing the Inner Artist
30:01 to 31:15
Cage reflects on finding humor and creativity in unexpected roles inspired by past experiences.
“But what can I bring that I'm going to find amusing?”
Channeling Icons: Jim Morrison and John Madden
31:15 to 34:53
Cage shares thoughts on how iconic figures like Jim Morrison influence his creative choices and the challenges of portraying John Madden.
“But to answer your question, I was channeling what I remembered that I loved about Miles' sound and his voice.”
Collaboration with David O. Russell
34:53 to 37:55
Cage discusses working with David O. Russell and the importance of stepping outside his comfort zone.
“So I just never got comfortable with anything I was doing.”
Collaboration with David O. Russell
37:58 to 38:22
Cage discusses working with David O. Russell and the importance of stepping outside his comfort zone.
“you can earn back the cost up to$250 daily cash.”
Memification and Artistic Identity
38:22 to 42:00
Cage reflects on how the concept of memification impacts his public persona and artistic choices.
“I'm the director of video at The New York Times.”
The Nature of Memes and Performance
42:00 to 43:19
Explore how memes reflect emotions and the role of performance in connecting with audiences.
“I think positively it kept me in the conversation.”
Influence of Iconic Actors
43:20 to 44:59
Discusses how figures like James Dean and Bruce Lee helped shape personal identity.
“who are doing their best to be upstanding members of the community, to live through and get their yaya's out, whether they're angry yaya's or happy yaya's or whatever.”
Nicolas Cage's Personal Anecdotes
45:00 to 47:10
Cage shares a memorable encounter with John Travolta and reflections on his career.
“me find my own identity or understand what I was going through in my own life.”
Myth-Busting Nicolas Cage Lore
47:11 to 48:36
Cage addresses several wild rumors about his past, clarifying truths and misconceptions.
“And I think I was administering the yogurt to myself.”
Reflections on Choices in Life and Art
48:37 to 50:30
Cage compares the decision-making processes in his art and personal life.
“What is true is, you know, my ex-wife and I...”
Navigating Personal and Artistic Choices
50:31 to 56:00
Explores the differences between impulsive life choices and deliberate artistic decisions.
“And I assume that in art, you're able to be very intentional and decisive about the choices you make.”
Nicolas Cage on Kindness and Personal Mythology
56:00 to 1:02:20
Nicolas Cage discusses the importance of kindness, his acting career, and the complexities of living with a public persona.
“And when I do meet someone, I know what it means to meet someone that I admire and have them ruin your day by being unkind.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This message is brought to you by Apple Card. For a limited time, when you get a new Apple Card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to$250 daily cash. New AirPods Pro and up to$250 daily cash back? Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval, limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at apple.co slash AirPods.
0:29Nicolas Cage:From the New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. I'm just going to lay my cards out on the table. I think Nicolas Cage is a truly special artist and the most original and unique actor since Marlon Brando. It's not just that he's capable of delivering beautifully naturalistic performances, like in Leaving Las Vegas, for which you won a Best Actor Oscar, or that he's jumped between romantic comedies like Moonstruck, action movies like The Rock, and unclassifiable films like Adaptation, it's that he brings a postmodern, highly imaginative, and thrillingly risky approach to all of it.
1:07Nicolas Cage:That style, which has led to his work frequently being memed on social media, also pulls from other films, music, and painting. And I think it takes acting far beyond realism or even, frankly, traditional judgments of good or bad. The same devotion to originality shows up in his off-screen life, too. Cage, whom I previously interviewed back in 2019, is a bona fide eccentric. His idiosyncratic interests, lavish spending habits, and all-around free-spirited nature are in their own way as legendary as his highly distinct performances. So what else can I say, other than that there's no one like him?
1:47Nicolas Cage:The latest evidence is the new series Spider Noir, which viewers can watch in either color or black and white. The show is Cage's first big swing at television. In it, he plays Ben Reilly, a hard-boiled private investigator in 1930s New York, who in a very Cage-ian mashup, also happens to be a web-slinging superhero. Here's my conversation with the great Nicolas Cage.
2:22Nicolas Cage:Nick, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it. Thanks, David. Thanks for having me back. I enjoyed our last conversation seven years ago in Nevada. We'll pick up where we left off. Okay. Which I don't remember. But where I wanted to start, I just watched the speech you gave to graduates at Cal State Fullerton. This is probably something like 25 years ago. Going way back. And in that speech, you said, artists have the license to go straight up the devil's ass, smile at him, and survive. When have you done that?
3:03I felt like I did it on Bad Lieutenant with Werner Herzog. And Werner was an influence on that particular speech because I remember he said, if you don't have the money to make the movie, you have to steal the camera and you have to steal the film and make the movie. Do it any way you can. You've got to make the movie. And I think it was saying something about passion, about the passion of facing the odds to get to the truth of what it is you hope to express as an artist. Sometimes you have to be willing to, within reason, allow your instrument, your psyche, your imagination to go to very uncomfortable and dark corners of your memory or of your thoughts in order to convey a truth in a scene that is perhaps disturbing or dangerous.
4:11in nature so that it doesn't feel phony. I'm not saying go out and do something dangerous, but I'm saying sometimes you have to allow your psyche, if you will, to embrace that dark corner of your mind. And I think that's partially what I was talking about in that speech about, as you said, reiterated, go up the devil's ass. It's not always a fun process to go there, to go back into that dark corner of your mind or that memory, or even look around you at current events in a newspaper to get to that place where you feel the emotion and you feel the grief or you feel the anger so that you don't feel like you're faking it.
4:54Nicolas Cage:Have you ever done what you just described, sort of used the world outside, sort of looked at current events to motivate? Certainly. I remember specifically on a little movie I made called Joe. Joe, yeah, David Gordon Green, yeah. And I was having trouble getting to that feeling of intense anger. And without mentioning names, I recalled a newspaper article I read about a little boy who was at the zoo. And he fell into a cage or an environment of wild painted dogs, the African painted dogs, and they ate the child alive. And I remember getting very upset about it that how could something like that happen?
5:43And so in that scene, I was upset that this child that I was sort of mentoring or guiding was the victim of domestic abuse and of his sister was potentially going to be abducted for other disturbing and horrible things, atrocities. And so I went and looked at that current event at that time, and then it got me there. So that would be an example.
6:12Nicolas Cage:You know, it's interesting when actors talk about the psychological or emotional risks of performance. They often talk about it in the context of darker emotions. Does it feel risky or difficult to get to the more positive emotions? So that's a really perfect question. And if I wake up in the morning, to use a cliche, on the wrong side of the bed, and I have to be funny, funny, funny, and happy, happy, happy, and dance, dance, dance, and this and this bright and sparkling and poppy, that is more difficult. That is much more challenging. Well, how do you get there? You become a specialist in compartmentalizing.
7:03Okay, that, I'm not going to think about what was said to me an hour ago. I am going to shut that off and act from the spinal cord and be happy and turn it on. And that's not easy.
7:17Nicolas Cage:You know, also in that Cal State Fullerton speech, something you said that really stuck with me is you talked about a willingness to invite negative reaction to the work, a willingness to be despised or have someone not like the work. And you said something along the lines of when somebody has a negative reaction like that, they're not BSing. Like it's a genuine reaction. And that's something that you're striving for. And I think about that a lot, actually. Like, if you're only doing something that people like all the time or only have positive reactions to, it's possible you're not taking them on an exciting of enough ride.
7:57Nicolas Cage:But it does take some courage to be willing to be despised or laughed at or misunderstood. And I wanted to know for you if you have a memory of when you realized that you were willing to elicit that kind of reaction or maybe even were drawn to that kind of reaction. I think it was on Peggy Sue Got Married, which everyone knows was a movie that I did not really want to partake in. And I found a way, and the powers that be said okay, to play the part in a way that I thought would be interesting to me, which was to use this voice that was not considered very attractive and to change my appearance in such a way where it almost became like a cartoon or like a dream cartoon.
8:54I knew full well that that was not going to go over very well. But at the same time, it's what kept me interested. It's what I knew that I was taking an enormous risk. But it was so exciting. Every day I went to work and I was just saying in my mind, I'm going to do this. I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to stick to it. And everyone else around me is like, stop, stop, stop. And I just kept going. And I'm very happy with that performance for me. And I think in time, it's matured in a way that's actually quite wonderful. And I'm glad I did it. But in the process, I knew I was going to invite a lot of negative commentary.
9:41Nicolas Cage:But then after Peggy Sue got married, you did other performances where you were taking things to places that were probably likely going to be misunderstood. Yeah. Was that a result of liking what you had done on Peggy Sue Got Married? It was. Like that you did, yeah. It was a personal choice of mine that I was carving something that I wanted to bring to life and have it shine in that way. Francis Bacon famously said in his book, The Brutality of Fact, that it's impossible to record anything as a fact without causing some injury to the image. So I was actively looking for, at times, the grotesque, like a Bacon painting, Vampire's Kiss.
10:29Even Raising Arizona, I was challenging Joel and Ethan because I was sticking to my plan that he was going to, H.I. McDonough was going to have this kind of Woody Woodpecker, Looney Tunes style, which they originally liked, but there were days where they were frustrated And they were like, why did I, why did, you know, I could have cast this person. I could have cast that person. Then I finally just said, well, why did you hire me? And that's topped that conversation. And the results on that, I think, are terrific. I think that that was a great union. Joel, Ethan, and myself and Holly, I think we got somewhere together that was remarkably funny.
11:11But at the time, it was right on the edge. And then Vampire's Kiss, of course. I mean, I was really struggling on that one because I had a very specific vision of what I wanted. I wanted to bring a Max Schreck-like style back into the sort of 80s, yuppie, this is before American Psycho, attitude of like the literary agent who's going to the best restaurants and he's going on dates and then slowly devolving into a vampire and thinking he is a vampire. And that, I wanted to bring out the Shrek-like behavior, and I did the horrible thing that I don't need to go back to with the ingestion of that thing.
11:59Cockroach. Yeah, right. Well, all that was me trying to make a big noise and say, we're going to do this. We're going to do something different.
12:06Nicolas Cage:But some of those performances that you just mentioned bring to mind a question I had that's going to be a little in the weeds for most people other than you, me, and Nicolas Cage fans. But I'm going to do it anyway. So I think one of the innovative things that you brought to acting was almost a kind of sort of like a postmodern, almost metatextual element to it, where you would take elements from genres that were outside of film and performance and sort of outside of the character you were trying to play and import them into what you were doing. So I'll give examples. I remember when I spoke to you last time, I asked you about this scream that you gave in a movie called Rage, and you explained that you were trying to emulate some sort of Stockhausen sonic effect with that.
12:59Nicolas Cage:Or in Face Off, there's a moment where your character sort of goes up behind a schoolgirl and your face raises up and you're giving a Francis Bacon-style look to the camera. Or in Mandy, there's a scene, I think your character is in a car, and you look quickly at the camera and the camera zooms into a close-up like a Bruce Lee movie. And there's any number of other examples, like the Woody Woodpecker raising Arizona. I could keep going, but are there similar examples of you doing that kind of technique that you haven't seen remarked on? Like, when have you done that and people have not noticed?
13:41Well, I don't know if they've known the specifics that went into the choices in terms of what you're calling metatextual. I would call the art synthesis concept that I was dabbling in, where I could pull from other art forms and have them inform my performance. and I like to take from places, whether it's in film performance, like you mentioned Bruce Lee, or whether it's in graphic art or any other art, Stockhausen. We were talking about Poonke and Stemung, I think. In this case, and I will let, you know, I did it again. And I felt that the Wild at Heart performance was Warholian, not Stanislavski.
14:38Warholian in that Warhol would take these icons and do these marvelous collages with them. I thought, well, why not do that with film performance? And David Lynch being David Lynch, the great American surrealist, was really up for that. Which brings me to Spider Noir. So, we'll circle. I can get there now or I can circle back. Go for it. Just go where you're going. Well, so Duchamp's shovel started this idea, I think, in pop art of taking a utilitarian tool and isolating it and we could regard it as fine art. And then you had Warhol doing that with the soup cans. And then I looked at all that and then I looked at Liechtenstein.
15:22And Lichtenstein utilized the – or embraced a mass utility in the comic strip and broke it down all the way to the little printing press dots that you see from the printing press. and he threw it into a still life. And that became a kind of Seurat pointillism, but it was a Lichtenstein taking irreverence and reverence in a comic graphic and making it fine art and almost being irreverent about fine art while doing it. So what am I doing with noir, Spider Noir, is I'm taking the reverence I have for the actors that I cherish like Bogart or Cagner or Edward G. Robinson or Peter Lorre from those old movies.
16:12And I'm taking the mass utility of the television or the tube, if you will, and I'm trying to mash that reverence I have up with a pop icon, a Marvel icon in Spider-Man, if you will, and make a collision in such a way that I'm taking television, which is a mass tool that many people imbibe on and ingest, and I'm saying, look at this, so that maybe the hope is that a young person in their teens would go, oh, wow, what is that? That's black and white. I'm not too familiar with black and white. I can watch it in color, but I can also watch it in black and white. What is black and white? oh my gosh, there's this immense volume of beautiful art that all these early actors were in.
17:04Let me check that out. Let's go look at that. And oh, and by the way, he's Spider-Man. So it's like this boom, this crazy Lichtenstein collision. So that is metatextual or my art synthesis concept Again, now, the fact that Amy Pascal at Sony, Jen Salke at Amazon, Orin Uzeal and Stephen Lightfoot let me, I'm still amazed by.
17:32Nicolas Cage:So when you're in meetings about doing a project like Spider Noir, do you explain the Lichtenstein stuff? No, I don't. I'll keep that under my vest for a while. I didn't break out the Liechtenstein in those meetings. I can do it with you because we can talk the same language sometimes. But, for example, with Jen Salkey at Amazon, I went over to her house and we all sat there. All the powers that be were there. And I just said, you know, it doesn't matter if a 13-year-old doesn't know who Humphrey Bogart is. The point is it works. It works. I know it works. And I remember thinking, calling Jen, saying, you don't have to only do it in black and white.
18:17You can also do it in color. And then they can hopscotch back and check it out in black and white. And then lo and behold, maybe they'll want to see The Big Sleep or Maltese Falcon.
18:30Nicolas Cage:You know, I had zero interest in watching the color version. Thank you. Well, I think folks like us, real film enthusiasts, will go with the black and white. But I'm hoping that the 13-year-olds, the 15-year-old, whomever, will see the color and go, well, let me try the black color. And I think they will. I mean, there's a real—are we doing spoilers in this interview? Well, it's fine with me. You're the one who has to decide. I mean, I really wanted to see a version of a Spider-Man that was grappling with the arachnid DNA that was flowing through his bloodstream and having to retrain himself as to how to be human.
19:13Nicolas Cage:I have a couple more questions about acting, but before I do, there's something I was curious about related to spiders. I know you've had a lot of exotic pets. Have you had a spider? Oh, sure. Sure, I've had spiders. So tarantulas, well, I even learned a little bit about the movement of spiders, and I put that in the script. Spiders don't have muscles. Their appendages are like straws. They shoot fluid. So the fluid is making their appendages move, which is fascinating to me. It's like a party whistle. All that went into the script. Um, there is a, a spider that I found fascinating, which is listed as one of the more intelligent animals and it's called the Porsche spider.
20:02And this spider, this spider is so intelligent. It literally knows what bug likes what, which tune on his web. So he knows what to play to get the fly, and he knows what to play to get the grasshopper, and that's really something that exists. I thought that was fascinating.
20:25Nicolas Cage:This is slightly related. There was a Reddit Ask Me Anything you did a couple years back. Right. And someone asked you about, I think, I don't even remember what the question was, but the subject of praying mantises came up. And you said something like, don't get me started on praying mantises. Why not? Well, I think it was the same movie we had talked about years ago with that great line, I never had a career only work, the Hammer horror film. Oh. A Million Miles to Earth or something. What? I was going to say Quatermass. Quatermass in the pit. Yeah. That's it. Whoa, you have a good memory. Holy moly.
21:11You remember that?
21:12Nicolas Cage:Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's something you mentioned in passing seven years ago. Those aliens in that looked like praying mantises and it flipped me out. I was very impressionable as a child, which brings me to another reason why I'm glad that I managed to finally do a season of television because I think even before I discovered James Dean and Brando, I was all about my television, the Zenith Oval television in my living room. And I wanted to get inside that TV because the people, those little people in that TV were far more interesting to me than the people in my living room. And I think that was my earliest memory of wanting to be an actor.
21:57It was people like Bill Bixby and Peter Falk and Rock Hudson and McMillan and wife and Dennis Weaver and McLeod. And I loved anything by Rod Serling. So the television, and it's amazing it's only happened now, was largely responsible for me wanting to become an actor. At the earliest age, like three, four, five, six, the TV was the savior of my childhood.
22:22Nicolas Cage:Why the savior? Well, I don't want to go into too much detail, but it was not the calmest domestic environment. And I could go and escape in the TV by watching shows or I could go in the backyard. Amazing how much time I spent in the backyard without anybody checking on me. I started digging a hole. I thought I was going to dig my way to China. And I kept digging and digging and digging and digging. And nobody found the hole. And I had a shovel. I kept digging. I saw roots and I saw weird bugs and I kept digging and digging. I would cover the hole with a plank of plywood and someone uncovered it and said, do you see what Nicky's doing?
23:01Oh my God, look at the size of this hole.
23:05Nicolas Cage:And what was the upshot? Did you get in trouble for the hole? Well, the upshot was it rained and then it was filled with water and I had like a pond of sorts. But yes, I did get in trouble for the hole. I got in trouble for the hole and I got in trouble for, because Evel Knievel was big back then. And I got in trouble for jumping off ramps on my Huffy bike, going higher and higher. And I remember at one point, I was going to put on a show for the neighborhood, and I would jump over beer kegs. I don't know how I had beer kegs. There were beer kegs. And I would go for one, two, three, four on my ramp.
23:42And then I had decided I was going to build a hoop of fire. I was going to build this round thing out of cardboard and douse it with kerosene, light it on fire. I'm going to jump through a hoop of fire, folks. And that was when they took the bike away.
23:58Nicolas Cage:Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Wait, let me return to acting for a second. Sure. Was that hoop of fire thing real, by the way? Which one? You weren't just improvising that? No, that's all real. So you actually— No, that's all true. Oh, wow. These are all true stories. Yeah. So there was an interview just a couple years ago where somehow the subject of sort of retirement came up. And you said, you know, no imminent plans, but maybe you had some plans to dial back. But one thing that you said was that you felt like you had pushed screen performance as far as it could go. And I want to know, where did you find the limits?
24:39Nicolas Cage:Like, where did you push it to? what were the ultimate boundaries for what you were able to do? But David, I don't think it was so much that I pushed it to the limit. I think I couldn't come up with, I wasn't able to come up with any more ideas as to what to do with it. I felt like I had realized, for better or for worse, for myself, I had realized for better what I had wanted to achieve with film performance, with things like Vampire's Kiss and Raising Arizona and Adaptation. And I kept pushing the envelope in terms of different points of expression within film performance. And I felt that I had said what I wanted to say with cinema, landing on dream scenario, which I'm very proud of.
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25:23And thinking, well, how am I going to – what's next? How am I going to stay interested? What am I going to do? What's going to challenge me? And I thought, okay, it's either going to be stage or television because I haven't done really that in any meaningful way as far as I'm concerned. Some high school plays, a bad television pilot that got, you know, didn't get picked up. And so I thought, well, let's, let's, how am I going to stay interested? Let's do, let's do something interesting on television. You know, David Lynch had done Twin Peaks and he reinvented, he introduced, He took the mass tool of television, the episodic tool of television, and introduced surrealism to millions of people, which is immense.
26:14Again, hopscotching, metatexturally, art synthesis. Halston did it. You know, he was a genius designer, and he decided he wanted to take the mass tool of J.C. Penney, but the snobs in New York pooped on his head, and it didn't pick up. Now everybody's doing it. He was ahead of his time. So now you see it everywhere. You see Armani exchange and many people get to enjoy designer style. This is brilliant. And so David did. And I thought, well, what can I do? What can I do and change the format and stay interested? And with Spider Noir, I'm hoping that I will have instilled an interest in younger generations to enjoy the black and white style.
26:57I designed my performance to fit in the black and white format. that Howard Hawks way of talking, that talking on your shining, all that stuff was designed to fit in the black and white format.
27:08Nicolas Cage:I have now two performance-related questions that I've been curious about. The first is there's a movie that came out just a couple years ago called Gunslingers, a Western, and your character does a voice that I would describe as maybe like a modern blues man or something like that. So what happened there? Yeah, what was the voice? Okay, well, so what happened with that was it's common knowledge. We had a back-to-back strike in Hollywood. And I suddenly got a phone call like, you need to do this right now or, you know, you're going belly up. And I said, oh, no, really? How much time? One week.
27:59I'm like, what am I going to do? I want to do this other movie, but they pushed and they're not sure they're going to go. How am I going to be able to afford to do the other movie, which is a movie called Madden? Oh, right. So the double strike hit and I got the phone call and I thought, oh, God, please, I don't want to do another commercial. I had done commercials in Japan a million years ago and I got burned there. because it was, I thought it was, you never say never, but I thought it was a toy, this little pachinko machine that my cousin had in his bedroom and we used to play it. I did not know.
28:38And I asked, is there anything wrong with this product in Japan I should know about? No, it's a toy. I said, okay. And then I turned, I did the commercial, which was fun and goofy and slapstick and what have you. And I got to embrace my inner Jerry Lewis, but it was basically Japanese gambling. They don't do it for money. They do it for toys. And then you could sell a toy, what have you. And that I really was, I had umbrage with that. And so I thought I really don't trust this as, as a thing I should be doing commercials. Plus, you know, I, at a time I was going through this thing, but like, what would Jim Morrison do?
29:15Well, he only lived to 27, sadly. And I, I don't know, I'm 62. I'm now older than many of my terrible advice. What would Jim Morrison Well, you know, he would not do a commercial, but he didn't live that long. So who knows what would have happened. But anyway, long story short, I didn't want to do it. And now I'm older than Beethoven was when he died and Humphrey Bogart and James Dean and all these guys and John Lennon and all these heroes of mine. I'm now 62 and I'm still here. And I wanted to do this movie Madden. I didn't know how I was going to be able to buy the time to get to Madden. And I didn't want to do a commercial.
29:50So along comes Gunslingers. And I thought, okay, I'm a cameo in this movie. Let's have some fun with it. Could the movie be good? I don't know. The director seems like a nice guy. But what can I bring that I'm going to find amusing? And I remembered going on Dick Cavett a million years ago with Miles Davis. And Miles was like, you know, he was sort of like, Nick. Yes, sir. where where's your leather jacket my my leather jacket yeah you know nothing from dennis dennis hopper man what are you wearing that suit for well i i you know and then i was on the show doing this with my hair it was sticking up like woody woodpecker again back to raising arizona and and then i had this trumpet with me and i wanted miles to teach me how to play the trump and then the trumpet fell down behind me he was like you be careful with that instrument And so then I got the trumpet.
30:50I couldn't get a sound out of it. It was so—there's been a couple times when I've really felt that horrible—three times in my life I've really felt that humiliating, embarrassed feeling. One was that, when I couldn't get a sound out of trumpet with the maestro. One was when I had to sing Love Me Tenor to the president's wife at the Cannes Film Festival on a table because David Lynch demanded it. And one was when I couldn't get the tune right on a harmonica in a high school play. All three were disasters. But to answer your question, I was channeling what I remembered that I loved about Miles' sound and his voice.
31:26Plus, I wanted to wear a green bowler hat. And I thought, well, if I can do a Miles Davis sound and a green bowler hat, I'm happy. So let's make the movie. Let's just make the stupid movie.
31:38Nicolas Cage:I'm still trying to get over the fact you were asking yourself ever, what would Jim Morrison do? When did that, did that ever go wrong?
31:50Probably. Yeah. Probably. Should I really have another whiskey? What would Jim Morrison do? Right. Nope. Yeah, he would say yes. He would say yes. Well. In, oh, go ahead. No, I'm a big fan of his poetry and his stage presence and his voice. I think his voice, if you listen to it today, sounds like it's so iconic it doesn't sound real. It's like how can that come out of somebody really, a human being?
32:24Come on, come on, come on now, touch me, babe. Can't you see that I am not afraid? What was that promise? I mean, he just did so fall, you know. I think my aunt knew him. And UCLA, I think they would go for - Who, Talia Shire? Yeah, they would go for car rides together and talk philosophy. He was a smart man, apparently.
32:47Nicolas Cage:And thus concludes the Jim Morrison portion of this interview. In - That's probably best. So what can you tell me about playing John Madden? I don't, I actually was trying to think about it. I don't think you've played sort of an iconic real life character before. No. I really didn't know who he was. I don't have, in my view anyway, much in common with him. David O. Russell is someone that offered me a movie a million years ago. I think it was, I don't remember the name of the movie. But anyway, it was a good movie, and he offered it, and I said no. And he's the only director that I ever said no to who actually came back and offered me another movie.
33:34Most of them, they get their feelings hurt or something and don't call you back. It's happened a million times to me. It's happened with Christopher Nolan. It's happened with Woody Allen. It's happened with Paul Thomas Anderson. They don't call me back. And my schedule didn't— What movie did Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson have? Insomnia. The Paul Thomas Anderson movie was a very early movie. He'd show me a short film, which was very good with Philip Baker Hall. and we were going to do something. Part eight. Yeah. And it didn't work out. But anyway, David did call me back. And I thought that that was really, it showed a lot of class that he would call me back and invite me again.
34:19And I didn't want to say no to him again because I do have great respect for his talent. And it was a beautiful experience. I enjoyed working with David. I enjoyed working with Christian. I enjoyed working with all the actors. John Mulaney. I mean, and we really got in step with each other. And so I'm glad I did it. But again, it was big challenge. It was a stretch. I mean, it's not, I don't think of myself when I think of John Madden. So I was like, okay, how can I get way out of my comfort zone? Which I think we talked about that. It was what David Bowie said to me. I asked him, I said, how did you do it?
34:59How'd you keep reinventing yourself? So I just never got comfortable with anything I was doing. And so that stayed with me.
35:06Nicolas Cage:In a movie called, I believe it's called Deadfall. Yeah. You, your character looks to me like you're doing a riff on Andy Kaufman's alter ego, Tony Clifton. No, and I've heard that before. That's not true, though. I wasn't riffing Tony at all. I was doing my own thing, which is interesting because I saw a screening of that movie with Spike Jones, who had directed me an adaptation, and he loved that performance. And then I saw his Beastie Boys video. I think it was called—what was the video? Rampage? They were all in like— Sabotage? They're all sabotage and they're all in like these bad wigs and they all – and these terrible sunglasses.
35:56They all look like Eddie from Deadfall. I was like, oh, okay. I think I know where that came from. But no, I was – that was another movie I didn't want to make and I felt like I had to because it was my brother and I said, okay, I'll do it. Your brother directed it. Yeah. What can I do that will make it interesting for me? And what can I bring to this? so I just went full id release just full um I didn't care if it made sense or it didn't I just wanted to do this like live wire performance in a bad wig and an upturned nose and the nose kind of went out and then up like that and I'm just I and I'm very proud of that performance uh I I do I do think it uh I think it endures
36:51Nicolas Cage:After the break, Nick and I talk about his resistance to becoming a caricature of himself. Maybe there's an element of like, gosh, I really want to see Nick go off the rails, and I'm not going to give them that every time, and I hope they're not disappointed.
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38:57Nicolas Cage:Earlier, you said, you pointed to a film you did a couple years ago called Dream Scenario as sort of being the culmination in some ways of what you were doing. a dream scenario for people who didn't see it. You played a college professor who starts showing up in people's dreams. But can you explain what was going on in that performance that makes you point to it as a kind of culmination? I think that because I was contending with this sort of meme, memification. I coined the word memification. I don't think it was ever used before. this memification that I had lived through and needed to find a place to put it, and that was the perfect vessel because the memes were not unlike the dreams.
39:46And so the dreamification of my character in Dream Scenario was similar to me to the memification of Nicolas Cage.
39:54Nicolas Cage:It's interesting that you bring up Dream Scenario as a way to address the memification because I was wondering if that was part of the intention for doing that film. And it was interesting because it also, that movie came not too long after you did The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which you played a version of yourself. And the character Nicolas Cage in that film was also kind of contending with a public perception that he was uncomfortable with. And in my perception, the sort of feverish memification has basically disappeared since Dream Scenario and since The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
40:39Nicolas Cage:And I wondered if in taking on films that directly addressed that, if you were trying to sort of puncture that so that the fever would break. Not consciously, no. But that's an interesting observation. Has it? I didn't know that. I don't know if it had. I think so. Oh, well, that's interesting. What is a meme, really? I mean, what is that? Is that a snapshot of something that happened culturally? Like, I think it's interesting to look at that communication as a result of some of my performances, that it would land in cyberspace in such a way that my face in Vampire's Kiss became the you don't say meme.
41:29I mean, I don't know. I think I'm flattered by it on some level, you know, that it communicated and it was remembered that potently. That it got into a whole new technology that I wasn't even aware of when I made vampires because it didn't exist. You know, it's, um, I guess how I'm choosing to look at it. I think positively it kept me in the conversation.
42:05Nicolas Cage:I have a different, a slightly different theory for why you, some of your stuff in particular, got memed. And I think it's also ultimately a flattering theory too. But I think one of the things that memes do is—also, I realize now as I'm talking, I sound like a jackass pontificating about what memes do. But I'm just going to continue sounding like a jackass. It doesn't sound like a jackass to me. Sounds interesting. But memes are sort of the purest encapsulation of a particular feeling or sentiment that is otherwise being expressed. So like the example of the vampires kissed, you don't say meme, that is capturing a feeling and an emotion that people have in the purest possible form.
43:00Nicolas Cage:And that's why it gets passed around because people use it as a shorthand for a feeling that they're having. And seen in that light, I think actually stuff getting memed is a signal that you were doing your, in your instance, in your case, were doing the job correctly, I would say. I think that there is a need for a vessel vicariously for folks who are good citizens, who are doing their best to be upstanding members of the community, to live through and get their yaya's out, whether they're angry yaya's or happy yaya's or whatever. whatever it is, I think, and I don't know how conscious I was of it, but that, that has communicated through some of the meltdown performances in my work where people can tap into it and live through it without having to go and do it.
44:10Whether it's Mastic Man in the pharmacy, You know, would you like me to take you out on the street and piss blood, you know, or flipping out and vampires kiss or whatever it is? I think that that perhaps more than anything else is what has enabled me to endure. People that I gravitated towards, like James Dean, when he did Rebel Without a Cause, he was speaking to, I was 15 when I discovered it. I knew what that felt like. And so I think as a person that enjoys being an audience member, I find these actors or personalities in cinema that have helped me find my own identity or understand what I was going through in my own life.
45:08it happened you know with Bruce Lee it happened with Travolta and Saturday Night Fever and it gave me a feeling of like oh I can I can do this yeah did uh you ever tell John Travolta that sure performance is having sure well what happened was yeah what's funny post-arm face right right what happened was literally I was going to Horace Mann Elementary School and uh I used to go to the um tropical aquarium store. Even then I was interested in fish. And I had these two buckets of tropical fish in my hands. And I had the t-shirt with just no sleeves walking with the buckets. And I thought I was Tony from Saturday Night Fever walking down the street.
46:00And lo and behold, I'm at the stoplight waiting to cross near the school and up glides John Travolta in a blue Adidas track suit and a gold, I think it was a 250 SL Mercedes. And he's looking at me and I'm looking at him like, oh my God, I'm, I'm you right now. And you're over there with my buckets of not paint, but fish that happened. And then kind of willed it into face off.
46:29Nicolas Cage:I have a million more specific questions about acting and performance, but can I just do like a quick rapid fire Nicolas Cage lore series of questions and you tell me if they're true or not. Okay. I'm in your hands. Let's have it. For better or worse. No, it's all good. What have you got? I got a bunch. Okay. So here's the first one. Vampire's Kiss, there was a sex scene, and you asked to have hot yogurt poured on your toes during the sex scene?
47:10There was some yogurt. There wasn't hot yogurt. And I think I was administering the yogurt to myself. But why? I don't really remember. Yeah.
47:32Nicolas Cage:Who knows? It's better that you don't. Yeah, probably. Who knows? Okay, next one. There was an old Playboy interview from maybe mid-'80s, late-'80s, something like that, and there's just an offhand reference to stealing an aquarium from the Museum of Modern Art. Oh. Did that happen? Yeah, well, it wasn't an aquarium, and it was in California, and it was a, it was in the trash. It was a lucite box that covers art, artifacts. And I just took it and I used it as an enclosure for a kingsnake. So not stealing technically. No, not really. No, it was in trash. I would say, yeah. Reusing. Trash picking.
48:20Nicolas Cage:All right, last one for now. I might come back to some others. But so apparently at Graceland, there's a private family only area. And I read that you were granted access to the private area and tried on some of the king's clothes and sat in the bathroom in the same position that Elvis was found in when he was found dead. Is that true? No, that's not true at all. What is true is, you know, my ex-wife and I... Lisa Marie Presley. When it was great, we were very close and we had a lot of laughs. And there were a couple of nights at Graceland where she wanted to go upstairs, and so I did. And I remember lying in Elvis's bed, and he had this, you know those little fiber optics things that spin and change colors?
49:18Like a lava lamp? Not a lava lamp, but not unlike a lava lamp. Little fiber optics, and it rotates, and then they can change colors like green and blue and little plastic-like strings, like whiskers that stand out, and they can change colors. They're usually sitting on top of a light box that changes colors as it rotates. And I remember staring at that and being very... I relaxed by it and calmed by it. And I enjoyed thinking of him looking at that and how it must have relaxed him. So it was kind of a beautiful, poignant little moment in my life.
50:02Nicolas Cage:Okay, so acting is, in a lot of ways, is all about choices, right? The choices that the actor chooses to make within the performance and the choices the actor makes about what performances to do. I think you're known in some ways for making unconventional choices in performance or doing the unexpected thing or the surprising thing. And, you know, I want to know about the difference between making choices in art versus making choices in life. And I assume that in art, you're able to be very intentional and decisive about the choices you make. Are you able to access that kind of control in life also?
50:50Nicolas Cage:or do choices in life present difficulties that choices in art don't present? I think that's a pretty astute question. And within the question, I think there's perhaps some observation.
51:07It's no secret that I have over the years, particularly early on perhaps, had lack of impulse control and probably shouldn't have bought that car or shouldn't have bought that property or whatever it was. Um, and yes, in art, the comedian in me is looking for the surprise. You get a laugh when you do something unexpected. That's what makes people laugh in my view, or you do something marvelously witty. but it's usually the surprise element that evokes a laugh response. So there's a lot, that part of my palate is always at work with the tragic part and sometimes at the same time. But in my own personal life, for example, when you met me seven years ago, I was more interested in other habits than I am now.
52:07I am extraordinarily boring right now. I live a very monastic life. I am not taking any risks whatsoever. If I can avoid it, I am really going to go the other way. And I am all about raising my three and a half year old, my toddler to have a happy and healthy life. That is my focus. And that and when I work, that's it. You know, my two boys are grown up. And I mean, I do have vices. I mean, I drink entirely too much caffeine. I'm drinking 200 milligram, you know, strawberry energy drinks six times a day, and I'm not good with my phone and the doom scrolling's got to stop. They're not good vices to have.
52:59They're not good for your psyche. But I'm not enjoying a martini, which I did like my martinis, and I'm not doing other things. I mean, I am pretty monastic. So So to answer your question, I'm not doing any unexpected things in life at the moment.
53:22Nicolas Cage:I have to say, I was wondering about the question almost in more of a mechanical cognitive way. Because I think, again, I'm just pontificating in a way that I probably shouldn't do because it makes me sound like I have no things that I don't know. But I think one of the real secrets to life, at least for me, has been realizing, like, if you can just get in between the impulse and a thought, you can really live a much healthier life, you know? Yeah. Like, if you can just consciously decide, oh, I feel this, but I don't have to act on the feeling. I can take a step back and decide actually what I would want to do or what would be the prudent thing or the better thing to do in a given situation.
54:08And it seems like with acting, one of the gifts is to be able to do that, to say, okay, my character is thinking and feeling this.
54:17Nicolas Cage:What is the best way for me to respond in order to deliver the performance I want? Are you able to have that kind of perspective on day-to-day life choices where you can step back in the moment and say, how do I want to move forward right now? Yes, I am. And is it the same kind of thought process? No. Is it the same kind of? So tell me about the difference. Two different muscles. One is a trained through years of experience understanding of my instrument and what I can contribute on the set for a specific character and performance. and with my co-stars that will flow and collaborate in such a way that we can have a spark and hopefully entertain you.
55:11The other is just sort of saying, well, you're doing this and I am not going to get angry because I'm not going to, I'm going to let you do that and be patient and take get in and think about what I can do to diffuse, but without engaging. And that I find very easy. I mean, when I was 19, no. Now I'm 62, sure. I think I know what to do and what not to do, whether it's at home or in a restaurant or out in public, whatever. First thing I do is I don't go out if I don't think I can meet people well. That's a choice. And when I do meet someone, I know what it means to meet someone that I admire and have them ruin your day by being unkind.
56:13My favorite pillars of the human spirit, which I'm a big believer in, are kindness, compassion, wisdom, and love. And, you know, I want to embody those pillars when I meet people.
56:28Nicolas Cage:Who was the hero you met that was not kind to you? The hero you met. I, uh, I, I, I don't want to say it because I still love him. and I don't want to... He's extremely famous. I mean, I don't want to upset him. Yeah. And sort of a two-part question. Do you envision, if not retiring, at least sort of ramping down the amount of time you spend acting, especially given that you have such a young child at home? Definitely. Yeah. So that's. And then what would you do if you weren't acting so often? Because I know in the past you've said things like, you know, you need to act to live. So how would you fill that space?
57:21Again, David, I'm all about my toddler. I mean, I that she takes. 80 percent of my energy and I'm focused on that. So there's it's not about how can I fill the time? It's more about can I find the time that I can be there to nurture her and guide her. And I'm lucky right now because she's young enough that as long as we can travel together and I can come home to her, that's good. But yeah, that is on my mind how I'm going to compartmentalize my time.
58:00Nicolas Cage:And just the last question, you know, I know early in your career, you were interested in the idea of developing a mythology around yourself, kind of becoming a larger than life character, I think. You're looking quizzical. Is that not the case? No, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about what you're asking me and I'm connecting the dots. And, you know, whether you realize it or not, you definitely have achieved that and are, to a lot of people, a kind of larger-than-life character or figure in the way that other kind of older Hollywood icons might be. I think of somebody like, you know, like a Dennis Hopper or something or a Brando, who sort of reputation precedes them in a way, and they have a mythology around them.
58:46Nicolas Cage:And I want to know, what was good about achieving that and what was more challenging? Because you might be larger than life, but I was thinking, well, it's your life that you're living that the other people are viewing. That's a really profound, I think, question because I'm still trying to find my answer to it. And it's pretty deep. Yes, when I began, I wanted to cultivate this mythology around myself. That was before we had this thing called the internet. And I didn't know that it would go that far, that it would be that widespread. I didn't have the means to imagine that one day it would become this thing we call memes or would go into different cultures around the world or whatever it is that the internet deploys.
59:46So I think it went beyond what I initially was trying to cultivate, a mystique, an aura, an enigmatic presence, a mystery, all that beautiful stuff that the black and white golden age, as we call them, Bogarts and Cagneys, Betty Davises had before there was so much television and certainly before the internet. I guess another way of putting it would be what was gained in achieving the goal of developing a personal mythology and what was lost. Well, I think that there may have become, you know, it's like I grew up watching David Carradine in Kung Fu and I saw him in a movie and he didn't do any Kung Fu.
1:00:39And I was disappointed. And so maybe there's an element of like, gosh, I really want to see Nick go off the rails, and I'm not going to give them that every time, and I hope they're not disappointed, you know?
1:00:50Nicolas Cage:And what was the good thing about it? About having achieved the goal that you set out for yourself in your early 20s? But David, it wasn't the goal. The goal was to create that mystery, that enigmatic aura. This is something else that I had no reference point that it would happen. And so I'm still trying to, so what, can I say that what's the good thing? The good thing is it kept me in the zeitgeist or it kept me in the conversation for better or for worse. But is it perfect for me? No, because that's not what the movie's necessarily about. That little two second moment, if you really want to see how the character got there, you need to watch the whole thing.
1:01:31It's not just little screenshots of little gifs or whatever they call them. It's something building to that eruption, if you will. And so maybe it's lost, you know, because now you hear all this conversation about attention spans and they're getting reduced and no one has time for that. So now they're just seeing you don't say or what. So I don't know if that's what I had in mind. What I had in mind was movies like Midnight Cowboy and Rebel Without a Cause and Last Tango in Paris. I had in mind movies that you would go and sit down and watch. I didn't have sound bites and gifs in mind. Yeah.
1:02:12Nicolas Cage:Well, you do have movies that people go and sit down and watch. Thank you. So thank you for taking all the time to speak with me. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, David. It's always a pleasure to have our conversations.
1:03:02Nicolas Cage:That's Nicolas Cage. Photography by Devin Yalkin. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Seth Kelly, Joe Bill Munoz, Eddie Costas, Amy Marino, Mark Zemmel, David Herr, Kathleen O 'Brien, and Brooke Minters. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Next week, Lulu talks with the cognitive scientist Lori Santos about the elusiveness of happiness and what we can do about it. I think we really just definitionally think of happiness as about me, me, me. and so much of the science and so much of this classic wisdom tells us that's the way you get off track. That's the way you pursue it in the wrong way.
1:03:40Nicolas Cage:I'm David Marchese and this is The Interview from The New York Times.
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