NICOLAS CAGE



LUV - I watched It Could Happen To You the other day. It was weird. It starred Nicolas Cage, but it wasn’t really a Nicolas Cage film. It was like watching an early episode of Come Dine With Me, back before Dave Lamb realised that people like him better when he just shrieks out arbitrary insults like a Tourette’s sufferer hopscotching across an electrified grid.


In the film, Nicolas Cage played a policeman. And that was it. Not a policeman who keeps hallucinating reptiles. Not a policeman who dresses up as a bear and punches a woman in the side of the head. Not a policeman who swaps heads with John Travolta. Not a policeman who sets fire to his head and then piddles fire. Just a policeman. Worse, he was a happy policeman. It was rubbish.


Any dick could have played that policeman. John Cusack could have played that policeman. Matthew McConaughey could have played that policeman. Matt Dillon could have played that policeman, for crying out loud. Getting Nicolas Cage to play a happy policeman was an unconscionable waste. It was like handing Picasso a tin of Dulux white gloss and asking him to do your fireplace.


Because when Nicolas Cage is at the top of his game, nobody can touch him. In fact, when Nicolas Cage is at the bottom of his game, nobody can touch him. This is because it’s impossible for your puny mortal mind to grasp the herculean frequency that Nicolas Cage operates on.


Only Nicolas Cage can look at the script for the first Ghost Rider movie, see all the fire and explosions and death, and think “Hey, this guy should REALLY like jellybeans”. Only Nicolas Cage can look at the script for National Treasure 2 and think “Hey, this REALLY needs a scene where I slide down a bannister in Buckingham Palace singing I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts in a crackpot cockney accent that’s equal parts Crocodile Dundee and Bjork.” Only Nicolas Cage can look at the script for the live-action remake of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and think “Yes”.


You might look at a Nicolas Cage film and dismiss it as merely a piece of junk about a man who can see 15 minutes into the future (Next), or a man who can predict the future based on a numerical code (Knowing), or a man who lives in Bangkok and is a bit dangerous (Bangkok Dangerous), but you’re wrong.


It’s a piece of art. It’s a piece of art performed by a man who knows how to commit. By a man who lives his ideals so hard that he once owned two Bahamian islands, 18 motorbikes and an actual dinosaur skull. By a man who once told the residents of Bath that he loved them with a tenderness you’d only normally expect from a rarely-visited grandmother. By a man who, if there’s any justice in the world, will have “Wha! Wha! Not the bees! Not the bees! Arrrgh! My eyes! My eyes! Arrrgh! Arrrghurbhb!” splashed across his gravestone. By a genius. Who dresses up as a bear and punches women in the side of the head. God, I love him.
- Stuart Heritage


HAT - Oh, I’m not going to get anywhere with this, am I? You lot love Nicolas Cage. Everyone knows that there are only three things that fly on the internet, and they are cats, infographics of things that Neil Patrick Harris says in How I Met your Mother, and Nicolas Cage.


Nicolas Cage means so much to you people that you even made a Tumblr blog about him. Boy, did I ever get a bum wrap HATing him. Because who doesn’t love Nicolas Cage? Who doesn’t love a man whose acting style is “basically Al Pacino”, who lives in a replica castle, who says things like “I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther”?


Well, me, for a start. I’m sorry, I know that if you’re male and someone says the words ‘Nicolas Cage’ to you you’re legally obliged to shout GHOST RIDER WOO! And honk out a couple of lines from Face/Off, but I’m female and I think Nicolas Cage is a total fucking nightmare. Here’s why:


1. NICOLAS CAGE HATES CHILDREN
Nicolas Cage called one of his sons Kal-El. Fucking Kal-El, Superman’s name. What sort of toothy, bug-eyed megalomaniac names his kid Kal-El? Does Nicolas Cage only talk to his son from inside a crystal? While he’s dressed like this?



And how is Kal-El going to cope in the playground? Or the workplace? Kal-El Cage, attorney at law? I mean Jesus. And if you think that’s bad, look what became of Nic Cage’s other son, Weston Cage: 



THIS IS THE NIC CAGE EFFECT.


2. NICOLAS CAGE USED TO BE QUITE GOOD
And now he’s not. He used to drawl, not bark out his lines like Foghorn Leghorn. He used to emote, not just pull faces that look like David Gest forcing out a poo. He used to be an actor and now he’s a theme park. A theme park called LET’S PLAY ALL ROLES AS SERPICO, ONLY MORE BATSHIT.


3. NICOLAS CAGE HAS EVOLVED
Nicolas Cage has one saving grace - one thing that stops him joining Charlie Sheen and David Hasselhoff in trying to surf the wave of having gone terribly, terribly wrong - and that’s that he is genuinely, certifiably nuts. Imagine being stuck in a lift with him. Imagine how terrifying it’d be to have him pace around you, raking through his hair plugs, harrumping at the walls and flaring his nostrils at the floor. Once he screamed that he would “fucking die because of honour” outside a nightclub. Another time he said “I would like to take The Wicker Man to Japan, except this time he’s a ghost”. And now? Now Nicolas Cage has transcended to the next level of human consciousness by having invented the “Nouveau Shamanic” acting style, which he explains below.


Oh, you’re welcome.
- Robyn Wilder