“That techno-rock you guys listen to is gutless.”

August 29^th, 2012

Valley Girl, (1983)

Nicolas Cage is Randy

I see now why my girlfriend in college was adamant I watch Valley Girl. When girls say they're looking for a “bad boy” they mean Randy. He's that potent mix of brooding intensity and puppy-dog vulnerability that makes panties drop. He's punk-y enough to be interesting but non-threatening; quick to stand up to a bully like Tommy but is never less than a gentleman with Julie. How many guys can hide in a bathroom until the girl they like comes in - at which point they pop out and say “Don't be frightened” - and make it seem more suave than creepy? I did eventually watch Valley Girl back in college but all I really remember from it are the awesome performances by Josie Cotton and The Plimsouls.

Introduction

My idea to make a diary on the films of Nicolas Cage has had a long life; so long that it now seems a lot childish. I like to think of myself as a grown man (I'm twenty-five) and different in many fundamental ways from the thirteen-year-old who once declared that 1995's Con Air not only a great movie but my favorite movie and Cage my favorite actor. 

It's easy to forget after we leave all the bullshit of middle- and high-school behind us but to a thirteen-year-old stating an opinion that flies in the face of accepted social norms can take a small measure of bravery. Youthful codes of conduct are shifting tides to the shy and socially awkward; it's much safer to put up one's sails and drift quietly along the current of popular opinion than to row against the wind. Any strong opinion that has not been approved by the council of one's peers could potentially tar you as the strange outsider you fear yourself (and secretly know yourself) to be.

This meditation on what seemed like courage as a youth speaks both to how good Con Air actually is and to Nicolas Cage's appeal to the teenager I was. In the early 2000's he was incomparable to anyone else in Hollywood, in part by his unabashed weirdness. David Lynch reportedly once referred to him as "the jazz musician of acting" and indeed, Nic Cage's performances have the loose-limbed excitement of jazz.. I had a pet theory I put forward to my friends at the time that Cage's films weren't just good or bad. Some transcended our notions of what good and bad films are to a separate artistic plane that could only be called "awesome". Part of this has to do with the projects he picks and part of it has to do with his performances. Even at his most phoned-in, Cage seems to effortlessly imbue his characters with emotional depths, alluding to thoughts and emotional undercurrents in the way H.P. Lovecraft hinted at stranger realities just beyond our comprehension. There's something rippling under the surface of Nicolas Cage that gives simultaneous impressions that he is an actor of ineffable talent and also potentially unwell.