"Who needs physics when we have chemistry?"

September 28th, 2012
Peggy Sue Got Married, (1986)
Nicolas Cage is Charlie Bodell

We have entered Nicolas Cage Golden Age. For the next few entries it's going to get pretty gushy on my end. I don't claim any journalistic objectivity in this electronic Nicolas Cage diary but all the evidence says that Peggy Sue Got Married is the kind of film that separates John Q. Moviegoer from a blindered Cage apologetic like me. The general consensus from audiences and critics is that Cage's performance in Peggy Sue is annoying and the whole film is a pleasant but flawed brief return to form before Francis Ford Coppola lost the plot. I totally disagree; I love the shit out of this movie.



Let's start with the beauty of this film's premise. When Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) attends her 25-year reunion she is surrounded by ghosts from her past: the friends she lost touch with though they had planned to stay close, the athletic beatnik kid she had a crush on but never acted on (Kevin J. O'Connor), her laughingstock ex-husband, appliance salesman "Crazy" Charlie Bodell (Cage), the weasely nerd no one liked who has since become a billionaire inventor (Barry Miller). Overwhelmed, Peggy Sue faints, only to wake up 25 years earlier, a teenager again. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Peggy Sue can choose to change her past or accept the decisions she made as the right ones.

"They say I look bigger with my clothes off."

September 25th, 2012
The Boy in Blue, (1986)
Nicolas Cage is Ned Hanlan

I'm not sure what the buzz around The Boy in Blue was on its release but I have to imagine that audiences were a little surprised when they discovered that, despite the movie's promotional poster and dramatic trailer, The Boy in Blue is not some sort of antiquated, Canadian Rocky.


It does have some of the Rocky hallmarks - at least a fourth of the movie is Nicolas Cage, shirtless, training for the "next big race" and there's a driving synth score pushing the whole thing forward, despite its 1880's setting - but The Boy in Blue doesn't just want to thrill and inspire you. In fact, thrilling is probably third on its list of prerogatives. The first and second are to educate and instill a sense of pride in Canadian heritage. Funded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Telefilm Canada, BIB shows its hand from the first frame as text appears, reading:

"Before baseball, football, or soccer, one sport alone captured the imagination of both rich and poor - - sculling."

Sure, you kids have heard about all the baseball and football and soccer greats a thousand times but let me hip you to the original cool: sculling: the sport of kings. And who do you think was the greatest sculler of all time? Why, Ned Hanlan, Canada's favorite son and, in 1880, the first world sporting champion in an individual or singles event! Can-a-DA! Can-a-DA! Can-a-DA!

"I saw a guy, Dix, who they also said would be fine and he had a face like a medium-rare cheesburger."

September 22nd, 2012
Birdy, (1984)

Nicolas Cage is Al Columbato

I'm about a month into my Nicolas Cage diary and this is my first sticking point: how do I approach a movie like Birdy?

I have to organize my thoughts. First, this is the first appearance of Nicolas Cage as we know him. Cage's performance here is not good by any standard definition but it's not really bad either. Interesting would I guess be a kind word for it. And isn't that kind of the story of his career?

Cage is supposed to a blue collar, puffed-out everydude who's best friends forever with an introverted spacecase played by Matthew Modine. Not only do Cage and Modine have no real chemistry as friends, Cage out-crazies Modine in scene after scene with his manic charisma. By the end of the film when Cage is on the floor of a hospital with his face bandaged and his legs splayed as he cradles Modine and shouts to the heavens Nicolas Cage the Dramatic Actor has been born and our lives would never be the same.

"Bugle Boy, meet Jesse James!"

September 19th, 2012
The Cotton Club, (1984)
Nicolas Cage is Vincent "Mad Dog" Dwyer

Critics often cite Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate as the deathknell  for the '70's Golden Era of auteur filmmaking. Before Cimino's film single-handedly brought United Artists to near-bankruptcy money was no object in service of a director's artistic spectacle. Afterwards former golden boys like Robert Altman, Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola had to soft shoe a little more if they wanted anything near the budgets they were once allotted. If Heaven's Gate was a deathknell then 1984's The Cotton Club was the nails in the coffin. Throwing money at a troubled production wasn't a solution anymore.

The same year Heaven's Gate came out Francis Ford Coppola pulled up on the tiller and managed to cut his own near-debacle - the notoriously costly Apocalypse Now - into arguable the greatest war film of all time. Years later Coppola was in deep debt following his self-funded, little-loved film One From the Heart and Robert Evans' Zoetrope Pictures was looking for a hit. Evans, the financial force behind the Godfather movies and Coppola's biggest frenemy had optioned James Haskins' pictoral history of New York's famous Cotton Club with the intent on directing it himself. With distributor Orion Pictures' money already spent Evans hired Coppola to write a draft of Godfather-scribe Mario Puzo's script in the hope of attracting some private investors  With tensions mounting between the two men directing duties fell to Coppola and once more he found himself trying to land a cinematic Spruce Goose.

“Just wait'll those Japs see me and my eagle come chargin' over the hill!”

September 10^th, 2012

Racing with the Moon, (1984)

Nicolas Cage is Nicky

All this talk of nostalgia is a perfect segway into Racing with the Moon, another film that looks to the past to explore how youth slips away. It's the story of two young men killing time during the Christmas of 1943 awaiting induction into the US marines. The debut film of writer Steve Kloves - who would go on to write Wonder Boys and all but one of the Harry Potter movies – Moon has such a lived-in specificity of place and time that I was surprised to learn that Kloves was born in 1960. Maybe some of that credit goes to director Richard Benjamin who was born in 1938 and would go on to direct The Money Pit and, um, My Stepmother is an Alien.

Anyway, Racing with the Moon kicked up my own memories of times gone by - namely, Fast Times and The Best of Times. Which is an irritating way of saying that it stars Sean Penn and features Crispin Glover as an asshole rich kid that Nic Cage clocks in a bowling alley before wiping the blood of Glover's girlfriend's blouse. It's kinda pretty awesome. 

“That was me at my five-year-old birthday party. I was good-looking even back then.”

September 9^th, 2012

Rumble Fish (1983)

Nicolas Cage is Smokey

Ostensibly this project is about Nic Cage but, since I'm going in chronological order, by default I'm starting with his bit parts. It's funny, with the benefit of hindsight I think it's clear that Cage's most natural fit is as a character actor, but he's made a career as an unlikely leading man. I guess that's what happens to talented weirdos who also happen to be extremely handsome (see also: Depp, Johnny; Ledger, Heath). But Rumble Fish isn't Nic Cage's film. He's here because when your brilliant, film director uncle sends out a casting call you put aside all that stuff about distancing yourself from him and jump on the wagon (three times).  

I knew nothing going into Rumble Fish so the whole thing was a surprise to me. My familiarity with Coppola's work between Apocalypse Now and Jack is pretty limited. I've never read an S.E. Hinton novel nor have I seen The Outsiders. I didn't know it was starring Matt Dillon as a teenager that everyone, including his family, calls Rusty James. I didn't know that Rusty James lives in the shadow of his spacey older brother, an ex-gang leader named The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) whom he idolizes. I didn't know it was scored by Stewart Copeland, drummer for that band so dear to my heart, the Police. Hey, is that Tom Waits as a soda jerk? Hey, is that Dennis Hopper? Is this all a beautiful dream?