Nicolas Cage Made Himself a Legend. Then He Had to Live With It.
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What fuels Nicolas Cage's creativity?
Criticism has been a huge fuel for me, like a creative writing prompt. If you couldn't tell, that is Taylor Swift, who hasn't sat for an interview like this in a long time. I'm John Caramonica, one of the critics behind the New York Times' 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters Project. We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, and these are not ordinary conversations. Watch all the video interviews for free and check out the entire 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters Project at nytimes.com slash 30greatest or in the app.
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. I'm just going to lay my cards out on the table. I think Nicolas Cage is a truly special artist and the most original and unique actor since Marlon Brando. It's not just that he's capable of delivering beautifully naturalistic performances, like in Leaving Las Vegas, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar, or that he's jumped between romantic comedies like Moonstruck, action movies like The Rock, and unclassifiable films like Adaptation. It's that he brings a postmodern, highly imaginative, and thrillingly risky approach to all of it. That style, which has led to his work frequently being memed on social media, also pulls from other films, music, and painting.
And I think it takes acting far beyond realism or even, frankly, traditional judgments of good or bad. The same devotion to originality shows up in his off-screen life, too. Cage, whom I previously interviewed back in 2019, is a bona fide eccentric. His idiosyncratic interests, lavish spending habits, and all-around free-spirited nature are in their own way as legendary as his highly distinct performances. To what else can I say? Other than that, there's no one like him. The latest evidence is the new series Spider Noir, which viewers can watch in either color or black and white. The show is Cage's first big swing at television. In it, he plays Ben Reilly, a hard-boiled private investigator in 1930s New York who, in a very Cage-ian mashup, also happens to be a web-slinging superhero.
Here's my conversation with the great Nicolas Cage.
Nick, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.
Thanks, David. Thanks for having me back. I enjoyed our last conversation seven years ago in Nevada.
We'll pick up where we left off. Okay. which I don't remember, but where I wanted to start, I just watched the speech you gave to graduates at Cal State Fullerton. This is probably something like 25 years ago. Going way back. And in that speech, you said, artists have the license to go straight up the devil's ass, smile at him, and survive. When have you done that?
I felt like I did it on Bad Lieutenant with Werner Herzog. And Werner was an influence on that particular speech because I remember he said, if you don't have the money to make the movie, you have to steal the camera and you have to steal the film and make the movie. Do it any way you can. You've got to make the movie. And I think it was saying something about passion, about the passion of facing the odds to get to the truth of what it is you hope to express as an artist. Sometimes you have to be willing to, within reason, allow your instrument, your psyche, your imagination to go to very uncomfortable and dark corners of your memory or of your thoughts in a scene that is perhaps disturbing or dangerous in nature so that it doesn't feel phony.
How does Nicolas Cage define his acting style?
I'm not saying go out and do something dangerous, but I'm saying sometimes you have to allow your psyche, if you will, to embrace that dark corner of your mind. And I think that's partially what I was talking about in that speech about As you reiterated, go up the devil's ass. It's not always a fun process to go there, to go back in that dark corner of your mind or that memory or even look around you at current events in a newspaper to get to that place where you feel the emotion and you feel the grief or you feel the anger so that you don't feel like you're faking it.
Have you ever done what you just described?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What fuels Nicolas Cage's creativity?
0:00–4:18
2
How does Nicolas Cage define his acting style?
4:18–11:03
3
What unique choices has Cage made in his film roles?
11:03–17:51
4
How does Cage incorporate personal experiences into his performances?
17:51–29:44
5
What challenges does Cage face in portraying complex emotions?
29:44–35:28
6
How does Cage view the concept of fame and public perception?
35:28–46:30
7
What does Cage believe about the importance of artistic risk?
46:30–55:13
8
How does Cage see his future in acting and personal life?
55:13–1:03:16