Monday, May 12, 2008
Nicolas Cage talks about selling imperfection.
Aug 8, 1998 | When Nicolas Cage was a much younger man given to saying poetic things that surely must haunt him now, he put himself recklessly on record about his Coppola ancestry -- that Neapolitan clan that includes cousins Sofia and Roman, his composer grandfather Carmine, Uncle Francis, DJ brother Marc and indie director brother Christopher ("Deadfall"): "We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy. Killers, even. It's loaded with grudges and passion. Very intense."
It's not a thing he'd say now. Indeed, the former misfit kid has become so respectable, one could mistake him for his favorite alter-ego, Elvis Presley, who inspired several of his best roles ("Wild at Heart," "Honeymoon in Vegas"). His recent roles in several "boy movie" blockbusters -- "The Rock" "Face/Off," "Con Air" -- left longtime fans wondering whether it was a sign that he'd finally sold out to big-budget Hollywood. But Cage insists he's as weird as ever as the fast-talking, corrupt cop Ricky Santuro in Brian De Palma's "Snake Eyes" -- he even picked out the loud Hawaiian shirts his character sports himself.
Salon caught up with Cage at the San Francisco International Film Festival last spring, where he spoke about some of his favorite roles and why he moved from method acting to "Warholian" acting.
What does acting mean to you?
I've always seen acting as medicine. When I first saw James Dean in "East of Eden," that scene where he wants to give his father all the money, and his father gives it back, saying, "I don't want it," and he's weeping and weeping -- well, it just ripped my heart clean out. I felt so, so sad. And it was at that point that I thought, well, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to say. I think audiences can relate to having problems in their homes and schools and lives, so I wanted to rip the mask off the superhero and get in closer to the community that way.
The characters you play are often flawed, in an almost cartoonish way.
When you play villains you can go one of two routes: You can make that villain so unglamorous that nobody would ever want to be that kiss-of-death ugly person. "Gee, don't want to go there. God, that looks ugly." Or, you can go the other, cartoon route, the overblown villain nobody believes in anyway.
I remember once my father said to me, "Tom Cruise sells perfection, you sell imperfection." My characters are generally flawed -- neither all bad, nor all good. So I always look for a little bit of humanity in them, give them hope. It's irresponsible not to.
Do you remember when you first got the bug for acting?
I first knew I wanted to be an actor when I was about 6 years old and watching the television. There were people moving around inside that thing and I thought, "Wow, how do they do that -- how do they get to be inside?" When I was 8 or thereabouts I was bullied on the school bus by a boy who kept stealing my Twinkies. So I got dressed up as my bigger brother, slicked back my hair and put on his shades and boots, along with a lot of attitude and swagger, and tried to pass myself off as Nicky Coppola's brother Richard, and told him I was going to kick him right up his ass. Nobody stole my Twinkies again.
Also, my family, and Uncle Francis [Ford Coppola], were very inspiring for me. They cultivated me, exposed me to great works of art. They played me movies like "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," with great stars like Max Schreck and Conrad Veidt. There were other things that really stayed with me, and really wonderful old movies bring it all up for me again.
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