“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. 

"Hit! Smash! Hit! Make it all bloody! He sure did a good job with that beef!"

August 23^rd, 2012

The Best of Times, (1981)

Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Coppola

I've known about The Best of Times for years and years but have never been able to find any information on it besides the basics: in 1981 teenage Nicolas Cage and Crispin Glover co-starred in an ABC pilot for a Laugh-In-style variety show. For a collector of weird pop culture ephemera could there be a more tantalizing sentence? It's just too weird to be true. I'd searched all the legal and illegal places on the internet I knew and inquired with people and places that collect such things but no luck! How could I start a zine about Nicolas Cage without seeing this? Surely it would be the crown jewel! 

Is it a sign from Heaven? Today, the day I finally decide to do this zine and skip right to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I run into the Best of Times pilot just sitting on YouTube waiting to be watched. God has given his blessing to this Nicolas Cage blog.