David Marchese

Your character looks to me

Like you're doing a riff on Andy Kaufman's alter ego, Tony Clifton.

After the break, Nick and I talk about his resistance to becoming a caricature of himself.

Earlier you said, you pointed to a film you did a couple years ago called Dream Scenario as sort of being the culmination in some ways of what you were doing.

And Dream Scenario, for people who didn't see it, you played a college professor who starts showing up in people's dreams.

But can you explain what was going on in that performance that makes you say, makes you point to it as a kind of culmination?

It's interesting that you bring up Dream Scenario as a way to address the memification, because I was wondering if that was part of the intention for doing that film.

And it was interesting because it also... That movie came...

not too long after you did The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which you played a version of yourself.

And the character Nicolas Cage in that film was also kind of contending with a public perception that he was uncomfortable with.

And in my...

perception, the sort of feverish memification has basically disappeared since Dream Scenario and since The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

And I wondered if in taking on films that directly addressed that, if you were trying to sort of

puncture that so that the fever would break.

I think so.

Oh, well, that's interesting.

I have a slightly different theory for why some of your stuff in particular got memed.

And I think it's also ultimately a flattering theory too.

But I think one of the things that memes do is... Also, I realize now as I'm talking, I sound like a jackass pontificating about what memes do, but I'm just going to continue sounding like a jackass.

It doesn't sound like a jackass to me.