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. “It could prove to be useful information. MAYBE” And hey- if you value your security and secrecy
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