This guy. He thrums with clumsy energy when he’s on a big screen, which is to say, totally to the beat of his own drum, and out of rhythm with everything else happening on the screen, slash iota of cadence, flow, or pattern.
Put a different way, the way the director is architecting the tempo of the movie is not in any way being followed by Cage, the one and only.
This is not an obituary. This is a coronation.
I have no clue how old Cage is. None whatsoever. If you told me he was fifty I wouldn’t not believe you.
Wild at Heart (1990)
What else, I love the way Nic cage takes every role available to him. Never says no.
That he has no “taste” in the classic sense of the word, makes me glow. Whoever pays the fee he will grab by the face like a matador. I love that he has been so bad in so many bad movies. I once went to a party that was a Nicolas Cage dress up party.
The purpose: Get dressed up as your favorite Cage movie character or persona, and have at it.
And you know what?
It killed.
Because of course it did.
Nic Cage is magical. He makes you appreciate how subjective art is. If someone told me they thought that Cage was the worst actor on the planet, not only would I believe them, but there would be plenty of empirical evidence to support such a claim. This is the dude who made these films:
Rage (2014)
Trespass (2011) (with Nicole Kidman, huh?)
Pay the Ghost (2015)
Fire Birds (1990), Bangkok Dangerous (2008), Outcast (2014) , Season of the Witch (2011), Dying of the Light (2014)
And on and on…
But wait — he also made these films:
Adaptation (2002)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Con Air (1997)
Raising Arizona (1987)
He’s done drama, comedy, horror, supernatural-horror, thriller, animation, mystery, crime, sci-fi, and romantic comedy, to name a few.
But would you ever attend, much less pay in fiduciary currency, to go see Cage perform Shakespeare?
I would, but it would probably be the equivalent of watching a helicopter crash into my fish tank. He’s not an actor who has any business performing to a live audience, much less a serious work of art like Lear or whatever.
And yet if an alien came down from outer space, I might show them you know who.
Nic Cage teaches us not to care.
His lesson: Who gives a fuck about perfectionism?
Art is subjective, and should always be that way, and so what do we have to be afraid of?
One of my teachers, Peter Markham, has some wisdom on this. He talks about the importance of considering the pov of the person who is going to see the thing you’re making.
The critic, the artist, the audience member, and so on.
It helps draw a shape around the piece, and it’s great news for perfectionists. Because unlike basketball with its incalculable statistics and empirical data, art is a slippery slope, no numbers to back it up, no nothing, just perception.
Sometimes the illusion of perfection can be thrilling. Look at Scorsese. He knows how to communicate something so precisely through his encyclopedic knowledge of the cinema, but even with him, there’s lots of people who don’t find his movies to be their cup of tea.
Too violent? To narrowly centered on his own psyche? To long?
Should Scorsese care?
When I was a budding filmmaker, someone like Wes Anderson used to excite me. Arguably he has become more exacting, more precise, more intellectual, more capable of communicating precisely what he wants to, and therefore “perfect.” But for my milky ass, less interesting, less exciting, and less, ultimately, fulfilling.
Nic Cage is an American legend. An artist for the ages. An example for all perfectionists out there not to take anything too seriously. An actor to be loved as much as hated.