"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.

“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?

“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.

"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.

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.