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.
Peggy Sue Got Married was Francis Ford Coppola's first box office success since Apocalypse Now and one of the last of his career (so far). Coppola was actually the third director to sign onto the film - the script had been kicking around Hollywood for a couple of years with Debra Winger in the lead and before actually being produced. With the sprawling Cotton Club debacle behind him you can almost sense the relief in Coppola's breezy direction. Peggy Sue is mostly assured but, at times, masterful - the scene where Turner faints recalls the nightmarish LSD scene in Apocalypse Now (also the most famous scene in Brian DePalma's Carrie) and the ending shot uses a false mirror in a way so ingenious it made my pulse quicken. No hyperbole; when Coppola's "on" his artistry leaves me emotional. I'd put those scenes right in my Coppola highlight reel next to The Conversation's toilet scene and The Godfather's marketplace shootout.
But the real stars of Peggy Sue are the sharp, poignant script by Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner, Kathleen Turner and, yes, Nicolas Cage. Turner is just fucking fantastic. Where Cage skirts the borders cartoonishness Turner's Peggy Sue is low-key and lived-in. Peggy Sue is a woman caught between the onset of middle age and a youth she maybe wasted. She keeps getting swept up with the thrill of being a teenager only to be pulled back by the realization that that part of her life is done. I love how she reacts in Peggy Sue's most famous scene as Peggy Sue and her friends watch their respective beaus (including a young Jim Carrey!) sing Dion's "I Wonder Why". You see her trying to damper her excitement for the man she knows is going to turn into her deadbeat husband but falling again for the teenager he was.
Turner's great in that scene but Cage owns it. I wrote in my Birdy post about how Cage was widely criticized by critics and audiences for his performance in the third and last film his famous uncle cast him in (and how he Cagely took it as a compliment). In fact, Francis Ford Coppola and the film's producers hated his nephew's take on the character and almost fired him. It may be a testament to the size of his balls or his delusions, the fact that Cage fought to convince one of the greatest directors of all time on the principle that his character should have a voice based on Gumby's horse Pokey's is the reason there Cage has developed such a stature as a cult performer. I can imagine a host of fine dramatic actors playing Charlie Bodell very well, but few would have brought me the joy that Cage's does with his delivery of lines like, "You mean my hhhwang?" and "Save it woman! Humiliator!"
Neither Cage's Charlie nor Kathleen Turner's Peggy Sue are meant to represent audience surrogates; they're unique individuals sharing an intricately drawn web of charms and hangups. The screenwriters clearly intended Charlie to be a lovable, charming loser and Cage's performance amplifies Charlie's weird mix of cocky bravado and his deep-seated lameness. It's like criticizing Johnny Depp for making Edward Scissorhands too much of an oddball. That's, like, the point.
But I guess I'm on the wrong side of history here. Despite a nice review by Roger Ebert Peggy Sue Got Married hasn't become the classic that Back to the Future - a very different movie with a very similar premise - has. But as Coppola's star was beginning it's descent in 1986 the directors of Cage's next film were just beginning a climb to the upper echelons of filmmaking.
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