Few actors are able to give such unhinged performances as Nicolas Cage – the man who yelled the alphabet front-to-back in Vampire’s Kiss, ran around punching people while wearing a bear costume in The Wicker Man remake, and battled literal demons with a chainsaw in Mandy. He’s a master of going out there, and he’s about to face his greatest task in upcoming comedy The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent: playing himself. The meta-movie from writer-director Tom Gormican is due to go into production soon, and will see the actor portray two fictionalised versions of ‘Nicolas Cage’ – a present-day Cage, and a younger, wilder one.
Speaking to Empire in the upcoming The Mandalorian issue, Cage opened up about the film and his tailor-made role. “It’s a stylised version of me, and the fact I even have to refer to myself in the third person makes me extremely uncomfortable,” he says. “There are many scenes in the movie where modern or contemporary – here we go – ‘Nic Cage’ and then young ‘Nic Cage’ are colliding and arguing and battling it out. It’s an acrobatic approach to acting.”
It’s not just in the movies that Cage has gone, well, full-Cage. Back in 1990, he made an iconic, all-time-great appearance on Terry Wogan’s chat show Wogan, quite literally somersaulting into the show, throwing money at the crowd, and karate-kicking his way into interview history – and he's going to channel that energy once again for the role. “Remember that talk show I went on, Wogan, when I was promoting Wild At Heart?” asks Cage – as if it were possible to forget. “Young Nic Cage [in the film] will be that guy. But this is a very stylised version of me. It’s definitely just me ‘taking the piss’, as they say, out of myself.”
Invoking a younger Cage means that the actor will be doing something he rarely does – revisiting his previous movies, with the possibility that Gormican’s film might do the same. “I don’t like to look back,” he explains. “But this movie kind of pushes it all back in my face. I’m probably going to have to look at a couple of the movies from the past again, because I think we’re gonna have to reenact some of those sequences. It’s like walking through a Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari version of Con Air and Face/Off.”
Read Empire’s full Nicolas Cage interview – talking Lovecraft adaptation Color Out Of Space, Nicolas Cage memes, Mandy and more – in the upcoming April issue of Empire, on newsstands from Thursday 20 February. The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is expected to arrive in cinemas in early 2021. Colour Out Of Space arrives in UK cinemas and on demand from 28 February.
