You know that this is good acting.
“You talking to me?”
You know that this is bad acting.
“I don’t like sand…
It’s corse, and rough and… irritating.”
Good.
“I have doubts.”
Bad “Oh Hi Mark!”
But what the heck is this?
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z!
Ha?!”
Here we see Nic Cage in the 1988 film Vampire’s Kiss, a performance that spawned twenty million
memes.
In a film with otherwise normal performances and cinematography, Cage spoke like this
“The work's not just going to go away Alva, it never just goes away… (none descript
swearing)”
ran like this
“I’m a vampire, I’m a vampire!”
and ate a live cockroach like this.
By the way we just covered this insanely kinda awesome movie on our movie podcast “Show
Me the Meaning”, we’re actually doing a full month of Niolas Cage film.
So check out the links in the description to join us on this journey into the CaGe abyss.
Movies like Vampire’s Kiss provide some clue as to why Nic Cage’s acting career
is one of the most disputed of any leading Hollywood star.
" "The tortures of the damned!!"
Some people love the guy.
Ethan Hawke calls him the only actor to evolve the craft since Marlon Brando, while David
Lynch dubbed him the jazz musician of acting.Now I know what you’re thinking.
THIS Nic Cage?
“Not the bees!Not the bees!
Ahhhh!”
THIS Nic Cage?
The Nic Cage that’s motivation for this scene was
“My whole motivation here was try to see how big I could get my eyes, just to freak
her out.”
Yep.
THAT Nic Cage
“Am I a BEEPING retard?
Ahhh?!”
In recent years, Cage has become just as well known for the ridiculous memes he inspires
as the roles he plays,
[Grunting]
leaving us movie-lovers at Wisecrack really and truly befuddled.
So today in this Wisecrack Edition, we’re asking “Nicolas Cage…
Deep or Dumb?”
Let’s investigate.
Who is Nic Cage anyway?
Nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, Cage is arguably one of the hardest working actors
in Hollywood, with over 73 films in his repertoire . The guy’s also pretty bad with money,
which may have something to do with his apparent inability to turn down any paying gig.
He’s an unusual Hollywood leading man, having appeared in stinkers, weirdly-great indie
films, big action films and everything in between.
His refusal to be typecast also makes him difficult to wrap your head around - he’s
basically half leading man/half character actor.
To understand Nicolas Cage, and this
“T, U, V, X, Y, Z!”
we need to put him in the broader context of film performance history.
When the first silent narrative films started being made, they drew largely from the most
popular performance entertainment of the time - theatre, and particularly the genres of
melodrama and vaudeville.
Both forms called for large, sweeping gestures that could be as easily understood in the
balcony as in the front row.
This tradition was coupled with the limitations of the silent film genre, which had zero verbal
communication other than this fancy typeset.
Actors had only their faces and their bodies to work with.
That meant lots of wide eyes, ugly crying and and berserk-o gestures.
It wasn’t “realistic,” and it didn’t try to be.
Then, in the late 1920s, “talkie” films with synchronized sound started becoming technologically
and commercially viable.
Suddenly, actors were forced to rethink their entire craft, a crisis best encapsulated by
this moment of Singing in the Rain, in which a famous silent film actor clumsily attempts
to translate his craft into the new era of sound.
“I love you, I love you, I love you, love you…”
“Somebody get paid for writing that dialogue?”
Change was slow, and movies of the 1930s typically show stars expressing a heightened reality
that harkens back to their silent film roots.
"You aint mad at me Min, are ya?"
"No, I ain't mad at ya"
Importantly, just a few years earlier, America had been introduced to the groundbreaking
techniques of Constantine Stanislavsky, a Russian acting coach whose ideas about realism
would eventually be turned into method acting.
Basically, Stanislvaksy, and method acting, attempt to help actors channel “emotional
truth” from within.
“Hey Stella!!”
As these techniques became adapted from theatre to film, actors began turning their characters
into fully-rounded people, and sometimes briefly living as those people, like Daniel Day Lewis
who spent the entire production of My Left Foot in a wheelchair.
These antics were eventually packaged as publicity gold which is why Leo almost froze to death
and Jared Leto mailed out dead pig heads.
Anyway, method’s emphasis on realism, coupled with the enhanced realism offered by sound
film, congealed in the 1940s and 50s, and swept Hollywood.
Actors like Marlon Brando became famous for disappearing into a character.
While there have certainly been ripples of other directing and acting styles, such as
the dementedly-over-the-top, campy performances seen in John Waters films.
“Someone will pay with their life for their grossly…”
“Mama, nobody since expects to live…”
There’s remained an overwhelming emphasis on realism as the goal of acting for film.
We typically award Oscars to actors who have disappeared into their roles, frequently while
portraying real people.
Which is all well and good.
Except when we become dogmatic about it.
Cinema scholar Carole Zucker argues that “the idea that acting for film should adhere to
a standard of gestural and psychological verisimilitude (ie realness/trueness) suggests a limited
vision of performance.”
Basically- what if the dominance of realism in acting has left us with narrow vision of
what acting can be.
Is the reason Nic Cage performances look so weird because he falls outside this view?
That’s the persuasive argument made by author Lindsay Gibb, in National Treasure, her book-long
love letter to the actor.
Gibs recounts the way Nic Cage originally embraced method acting, even having two teeth
removed for his role as the injured veteran in 1984’s Birdie.
But Cage quickly tired of the style.
Thus began the truly Cage-ian search for a form of acting that went… beyond.
“Too late, Too late, Too late, Too late”
In 1990, he told American Film, “I wanted to put back into acting a more surreal or
experimental style that wasn’t totally run by literalism, which seemed like a dead end.”
Cage considers Vampire’s Kiss to have been the “laboratory” for the new ideas he
was toying with, a low-stakes indie setting where he could experiment, play and and recite
his ABCs.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G”
Sorry, we really love that scene
“I never misfiled anything!”
In Vampire’s Kiss, we start to see the Nic Cage we’ve come to know and meme.
“There you are!”
He makes bold daring choices that take advantage of all aspects of his physicality,including
some patently goofy facial expressions.
While we’re accustomed to seeing some of this broad-style acting in every era of screwball
comedy,Cage would go on to employ it fearlessly whether he’s working in melodrama, action
or horror.
"Glass or plastic?
Glass or plastic?
Glass or plastic?"
He is unapologetically performative.
While that quality proves confusing for the viewer in naturalistic films like Vampire’s
Kiss, it tends to work really well in movies that push the limits of reality - movies set
in surreal worlds that can accommodate his bold choices.
Take Cage’s bombastic performance in Moonstruck, which is fitting for a film
preoccupied with the dramatics of opera.
As Ronnie, the long-estranged brother of Teresa’s fiancee Johnnie, Cage expresses a volatility
that is captivating to watch.
“I lost my hand, I lost my bride.
Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his bride.”
Over 30 years later, in Mandy, Cage gives an unrestrained heavy metal performance only
appropriate for a LSD-fueled film featuring a sword-boner.
Similarly, in the dream world of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart, Cage’s outrageous, brain-bashing,
Elvis-crooning Sailor feels right at home.
“This is a snakeskin jacket!
And for me it's a symbol of my individuality, and my belief... in personal freedom.”
Cage’s dialed-up style can work, provided the filmmaker and the other actors are in
on it.
Cage’s outrageous antics lead many a critic to deem him “out of control” or “over
the top.”
“DIE!!!”
[laughs]
[screams]
[gags]
[screams]
But understanding how he approaches his craft kind of changes everything.
Cage is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly well-versed in the craft of acting.
Some of his most famously- ridiculous moments are planned out, move by move by move.
“BEEP you BEEP you BEEP you.”
Take the famous alphabet recitation - of which Cage says every one of those moves, each hand
clap, hip thrust, pout and holler was carefully thought and planned out.
At other times, Cage takes inspiration from Kabuki, a Japanese avant-garde performance
art that combines acting, dancing and singing, with extreme stylization.
That’s probably where Cage’s tendency to ad-lib made-up lyrics comes from, best
seen in this drunken interlude in Leaving Las Vegas.
“Like the Kling klang king of the rim ram room.”
Gibb argues that what Cage calls his Western Kabuki style and its appreciation for the
hyper-performative is the reason he tends to adopt a different voice for every character
he plays.
“I said, put the bunny back in the box”
For his own part, Cage says his vocal experimentation has been an attempt to use his voice in almost
a heavy metal or operatic or baroque way.
"Ever been dragged to the sidewalk and beaten till you PISSED BLOOD?"
Indeed, it doesn’t get more heavy metal than his screaming scenes in Mandy.
[Screaming]
Cage’s insane attention to the details of body movement is the reason his characters
in Adaptation feel so persuasively different.
Cage plays twin brothers, who represent the two sides of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s
personality.
Charlie is a neurotic, chronic over thinker obsessed with making genuine art, while Donald
is the charismatic Hollywood sellout.
Fittingly, they move like two entirely different people, an affect Cage says he created by
adjusting his spine.
For Charlie’s rigid and controlled movements, Cage hunched over and tensed up while he straightened
his back and loosened up to portray the more go-with-the-flow Donald.
At other points, Cage draws inspiration from German Expressionism, commonly viewed as the
first real film movement, which explored the horrors of post world war I life in Germany
through highly-emotional, subjective storytelling.
Dream-like horror films defined the genre, depicting nightmarish worlds filled with twisted,
terrifying villains.
These films left a lasting impact on the film world, influencing genres like film noir,
horror and even graphic novels like Sin City.
Nic Cage isn’t one to miss out on the fun.
In interviews, he’s described watching classic German Expressionist films like Nosferatu
and Metropolis as a kid, and described the way certain distinct hand motions - like this
famous gesture in Moonstruck - were inspired by those films.
At other times, he’s modeled his characters’ physical attributes off of characters from
German Expressionist films.
Other times, he’ll take things to a more mystical levels.
Take his role as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider, a performance that was widely panned.
Gibb describes how Cage adopted what he calls “nouveau shamanism,” ”in which he integrated
Afro-Caribbean techniques” and sewed “thousand-year-old Egyptian artifacts into his clothing.
He also prepared by “painting his face white and black like a voodoo priest.”
All of these techniques were meant trick him into thinking he is a character from another
dimension with special powers.
Keep in mind that this was all preparation for this role.
[sounds]
Rather than phoning in his superhero turn, Cage decided to “push the boundaries of
what is comfortable.
For his Oscar-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas, Cage studied cinema’s most convincing
alcoholics, and even hired a drunk actor to hang out in his trailer.
As a constant student of the craft, he takes on roles not because they’ll improve his
reputation CLEARLY.
[screams]
Instead, he tries radically new genres, roles and pulls from new influences.
Whether he’s channeling ancient vampires or even more ancient shamans, Nicolas Cage
defiantly refuses to conform to realism, drawing into question why that’s even the benchmark
for our understanding of good acting.
We don’t fault the song “Yellow Submarine” for unrealistically depicting the aquatic
life.
Modernist authors like Virginia Woolf are deemed revolutionary for the way their highly-stylized
novels depict life in the abstract, creating unreliable timelines and dreamlike narratives.
Meanwhile, musicians like Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage are considered geniuses for
breaking every rule of normal music-making.
So why do we consider a departure from realism to be an explicitly bad thing only when it
comes to acting?
Well we’ll venture a guess: Film, with its close-ups and point of view shots, is arguably
the most intimate artform.
When we so closely identify with a central character, we naturally expect the performer
to behave approximately the way that we would.
Part of why Nic Cage can be so maddening to watch is he specifically refuses to do just
that.
“I think you better pull the trigger…
Because I don’t give a [Beep]”
He’s also generally working with people who don’t ascribe to his acting philosophy,
like if a death metal singer subbed in at his local church choir.
His wild reactions and bug-eyed expressions confuse our expectations.
They also make for particularly ridiculous moments that, in a meme which erases the context
of film, make his performances seem ridiculous.
But what if there are actual merits to his out-there performance style?
Compare Nicholas Cage’s Peter in Vampire’s Kiss to Christian Bale’s charismatic and
murderous Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
While both films are poking fun at the corporate yuppy culture of the 80s, Bale’s Bateman
has become an iconic antihero who is weirdly revered and perversely admired for his highly-specific
brand of social-status obsessiveness.
“Look at that subtle off-white coloring.
the tasteful thickness of it .Oh my god it even has a watermark.”
In comparison, Cage’s Peter is so inaccessible, so clearly performative, that he runs no risk
of becoming sympathetic to the audience.
“Ohhhhh”
Still, there’s a reason we’re talking about Nic Cage and not, say, Chris Pine’s
acting style: It’s compelling, it’s different, its controversial.
And ultimately, its subjective.
You have every right to consider this ridiculous or to consider it totally awesome.
Either way, we’d argue that, with a few more Nic Cage’s, Hollywood might just be
a lot more interesting.
You don’t have to be president of your local Nic Cage fan club to construe value in what
he’s doing.
In fact, you can straight-up find him absurd.
No matter what, you have to admit: He’s pretty interesting.
So what do you think?
Is Nic Cage deep or dumb?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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