welcome back to the program thank you thank you thank you i'm doing very well so well thank you
very much for being here i was just handed a list of some of your films this is your filmography i
guess they call it fast times at ridgemont high that's right a fantastic motion picture valley
girl rumblefish the cotton club birdie peggy sue got married raising arizona another great movie
moon struck right with our friend cher honeymoon in vegas a great movie very entertaining film
garden cass it could happen to you leaving las vegas another las vegas movie
for which you won an academy award the rock con air face-off city of angels adaptation
oscar nomination pretty impressive uh body of work therefore i appreciate that dave thanks for
uh pointing it all out well i was very impressed when i saw it well thank you how was your summer
did you do anything special well actually it's funny you should you should ask me that
because you you know i have an interest in zoology i think and uh i just i just acquired uh
two king cobras oh my god a male and a female and the female's name is sheba and the male's name is
moby because he's an albino so it's like moby dick and i i have them behind uh two computer
locked doors behind bulletproof glass and i um i like to go in there actually if they bite me
i won't get bit but if they do i've got 15 minutes to live so i have to get like an
antidote which is next to the cage and i just plunge into my knee and i'll be all right
that's not gonna happen but uh i like to go in there in my red leather chair you know with a
glass of wine and watch them as they're watching me and sometimes moby will sort of do this little
charming snake dance and show his back to me he's got this like little round circular pattern on the
back of his uh his back and he's doing this dance and every now i'll just turn around go kill you
so so after that i have to just sort of kind of
i say goodnight kids and i go upstairs i have to lie down and think about what just happened
it's kind of like driving 190 miles per hour in a sports car
with a scotch it's the adrenal level goes up uh my i didn't i didn't realize that about you
i actually discovered this about me this summer recently so but i i do i like all kinds of animal
life i always have and i think they're beautiful be be very careful i will thank you now uh you've
been making the movies for a long time as we ran down to some of them in your career uh how did it
begin is it kind of thing where when you were a kid you knew automatically you wanted to be
a an actor or in films or connected to films i was i i distinctly remember i was six years old
and i was sitting on the living room carpet trying to figure out a way to get inside the tv
set because life in the tv set seemed so much more interesting to me than what was
happening uh at home and so i thought well how can i get in they had the million dollar movie
at that time that movies cost a lot more now but i wanted to be a part of the million dollar movie
so that was my first recollection of wanting to be an actor and then when i was 15 i i i started
working at the fairfax movie theater selling popcorn and tickets at the concession stand
trying to figure out how to get from the stand to the screen so i always wanted to be in film right
and i had idols heroes like marlon brando and jack nicholson and james dean and eastwood and
and that's really what i wanted to do right but still in all even though you're in a theater
watching movies and selling popcorn it's an enormous leap then to actually being in the
well that's how were you able how were you able to take that next step well that well that's but
that that was where the dreaming came in and the desire and the power of imagination is really what
kind of motivated me but even when i was eight i was making uh home movies with my brother
and he uh he would make these little films with a super eight camera and they were very intense
because i'd be i was eight years old he was ten and we did this picture called the unknown
circus i call it a picture but it's it's just a tiny little millimeter home movie but i played
a trapeze uh no i i played the uh tightrope walker and he was a trapeze artist that was
jealous of him and he was shooting me with a gun because of something involving a girl
this is going on when we're like eight and ten so it was uh pretty advanced really advanced yeah
and and what did the snake say to you again
well i mean i mean he's he's done it several times he said i want to
you want to tell us about your first professional acting experience was that difficult for you was
that uh easy i mean the the fact that you you're part of the coppola family was that a boost for
you or did you that work against you in an odd way well that i mean i i wasn't really aware
of really what francis had done when i was a kid then i went and i visited him in lake tahoe and
he was shooting godfather too and that's when i started to realize something was up right because
there was all these amazing people there and al pacino listening to classical music and it just
it was it was kind of a wonderful time for me um yeah but so that's pretty much the only time
i had that kind of experience with them well it must have been a very heady experience for a kid
it was actually i would think so uh now i started talking about uh matchstick men
right but we don't want to give too much away about the story yeah there's a lot of
twists and turns but to tell people what we can tell about the film well i play a i play a man
who's a lonely man and he has a he suffers from agoraphobia and he's also a con artist
and he has never been a a parent and suddenly this young lady shows up in
his life beautifully played by allison loman she's a 14 year old girl she plays my daughter very
appealing in the party yeah and i have no i have no experience being a parent and i'm confronted
with this and rather frustrated which is where i think the humor comes in that i don't know how to
interact with her as a dad right and and she sort of uh and maybe this is saying too much she
she takes to the profession kind of readily i start to put her on the grift so to speak
yeah and i don't feel so so great about he's in kind of denial about being a con artist you know
he says uh people give me their money i don't take it from them well it's good to see you again thank
you uh good luck with the movie and uh by god good luck with the snakes for heaven's sakes i'll try
not to get bit thank you very much nicholas cage everybody we'll be right back with alton brown
you