Nicolas Cage goes wild? Yes, and no. Hear him in 1994

I Couldn't Throw It Out, Season 3, Episode 33
A Calm, Shy Nicholas Cage? Yup, in a '94 Chat

Michael Small:
Hello and welcome to I Couldn't Throw It Out, the podcast where we dig out treasures we've saved for years and try to throw them out. In this episode, you'll hear a tape recording of my 1994 phone interview with Nicolas Cage. Back then, he was filming his 24th movie, so I asked if he was more comfortable on screen than in real life. And here's what he told me.

[Recorded interview begins]

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, I think I feel safe in acting. I'm more intimidated in my everyday life. I'm very shy and nervous around talented women. I get very tongue-tied and I don't know what to say and I inevitably make a fool out of myself. I'm just not good at social situations. But when I'm acting, I think I can wear the clothes and hide and I'm not intimidated.

[Recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
For more about Nicolas Cage, his childhood, his family, his reasons for feeling anxious, and his extremely active career, which now includes about 124 movies. Keep listening.

[Song excerpt begins]

I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
Before I turned to dust I've got to throw it out

[Song excerpt ends]

Michael Small:
Okay everyone, this is it. I have in my hand the main purpose for today's episode, a cassette tape that I have saved with the recording of a phone interview I did with Nicolas Cage in 1994. And we must decide if I should save it or throw it out. As always, I need help with this decision, but my co-host Sally Libby is on hiatus, so I am very, very lucky that a friend I met in 1997 is here to help me.

I met today's guest when he was a senior editor at Entertainment Weekly Magazine. Since then, he was a film and pop culture critic at the Boston Globe for something like 19 years, where he was a finalist in 2017 for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. He now reviews movies for the Washington Post and other publications. He's written a few books about movies and he's the author of a really wonderful newsletter where you can get excellent guidance about old and new movies you need to see. That newsletter is called Ty Burr's Watchlist and he is the one and only Ty Burr. Welcome Ty.

Ty Burr:
Thank you, the one and only Michael Small.

Michael Small:
Thank God there's only one of me. So Ty, before we listen to my interview with Nic Cage, I am so glad that you're here to give us some perspective about his career because there's definitely a lot there to consider.

Ty Burr:
Yep.

Michael Small:
For starters, as I mentioned, he has appeared in 124 movies, I think, or something like that. That sounds like a lot. Is that rare for someone to be in that many movies?

Ty Burr:
You know, it's rare for somebody these days to be in that many movies. For that long of filmography, you have to go back to the studio era, you know, when contracted stars were put into movies, whether they wanted to be in them or not. But there are certain hardworking actors of today who you go on Wikipedia or IMDB, their filmography is longer than your arm.

Michael Small:
And Nic Cage is one of them.

Ty Burr:
Yep.

Michael Small:
I'm wondering, is there anything you could say that's unusual about Nic Cage's career as an actor?

Ty Burr:
Yes. He is one of the very few performers for whom his over-stylized acting, what other people might call hamming,is in fact part of his, for lack of a better word, brand, part of his persona. And I can't think of many other actors who have really sort of ridden that persona of being the over-actor, the like creatively bonkers over-actor. You know, almost have to like go back to late period John Barrymore to find somebody who is just like really just pushing it to the wall and saying, look what I'm doing. I'm really having a good time here. I hope you are too.

Michael Small:
As a matter of fact, I asked him a little bit about that and I thought I'd play just a quick clip talking about how he takes risks.

[recorded interview begins]

Nicolas Cage:
You could feel great about the scene, so wow, I really gave it my all. I really dug down and got emotional. And it's completely preposterous when you watch it. You're embarrassing. That's also what's scary about acting. Okay, I'm gonna go here for this scene, and I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna come off looking like a real showboater.

[recorded interview ends]

Michael Small:
Does that seem like a good self-assessment to you?

Ty Burr:
Yes, if somewhat less aware of the other actors in the scene. There was a wonderful interview with Kathleen Turner about eight, 10 years ago in which she discussed being in Peggy Sue Got Married with Nicolas Cage. And she was like, honey, what the hell is this little shit doing? And she went to the director who happened to be Francis Ford Coppola and said, you know, this is getting in the way of what I'm doing. And I'm a professional. And he said, you know what, let him do it. And she gritted her teeth. If you've seen Peggy Sue Got Married, he plays her husband before she goes back in time. And he puts on this very bizarre Nicolas Cage accent that comes out of nowhere. I would love to hear what other actors think of Nicolas Cage. He may be a perfectly nice person to work with, but I don't know that he's an easy person to share the screen with.

Michael Small:
I read that he went on a two week drinking binge to prepare for Leaving Las Vegas. What do you think about that kind of stuff for an actor?

Ty Burr:
There's a very, very famous story, probably so famous it's apocryphal, about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man, where Hoffman's character is supposed to be exhausted from staying up all night, and Hoffman stayed up all night and arrived on the set exhausted, and Olivier said something like, "My dear boy, it's called acting." That kind of method preparation attracts serious actors and gets a lot of mockery and scorn. Nevertheless, I think if you are going to be playing somebody who is committed to killing himself by drinking himself to death, going on a two week binge is not a bad way to prepare to seriously to experience, you know, what's happening to your body, what's happening to your mind. That seems legit to me. I think you can take it too far. There are famous stories of Cage and plenty of other actors where they don't break character for the entire shoot. And we kind of laugh at that and go, how pretentious. But sometimes if that's what you need to do what you think is the best acting job. Weird actors are interesting, especially when they turn around and deliver the goods, which Cage does.

Michael Small:
Yes. In 1994, he said to me he hated the Oscars because it was just like high school. And in 1995, he won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for that role in Leaving Las Vegas.

Ty Burr:
And I think saying that the Oscars are like high school, it's exactly what somebody who has never won an Oscar would say and exactly what somebody who has won an Oscar would not say. Cage has this filmography where he will appear in absolute dreck and give like over-the-top performances and crap. And he seemingly has, you know, no impulse control in terms of what kind of movies he'll appear in. And then he will turn around and remind you that he is an incredibly skilled actor or he'll just take a part that just fits what he wants to do with it. Leaving Las Vegas is it's a straight role in that, you know, it doesn't really call for him going over the top and doing all sorts of crazy physical business. I think he took seriously what the movie was about and approached it as a realistic performance and it works. The general consensus, cultural consensus was that was a deserved Oscar, that he deserved the admiration of his peers. It's a tough performance in a not easy film. It's funny, having done that, he then embarks on a period of balls out action movies, The Rock, Con Air, Face Off, and he goes into this period of his career where he's an action hero. If an Oscar allowed him to do that, okay, fine.

Michael Small:
The year that I spoke with him, I think he had four movies come out. I felt obligated to go back and look at the movies he did make that year. And I found two of them completely unwatchable.

Ty Burr:
Which were those?

Michael Small:
It could happen to you with Bridget Fonda and Trapped in Paradise with John Lovitz and Dana Carvey.

Ty Burr:
I never even saw that one.

Michael Small:
We watched the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes and we understood the whole movie without even seeing what was in the middle. But I liked Guarding Tess.

Ty Burr:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
Especially compared to the other two. I thought he did a really good job. Does that seem usual for him that there are ups and downs?

Ty Burr:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the Hollywood maxim is you're only as good or as bankable as your last movie.

Michael Small:
It seems like his career went in some phases.

Ty Burr:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
When I interviewed him, he was 30 years old. He had already done Birdie, Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. Do you have thoughts about his early career, like up until he spoke to me and versus his later career?

Ty Burr:
There's a line for me that's drawn between 1987 and 1989. He does Raising Arizona, which is a brilliant piece of slapstick and Moonstruck in which he is a very, very credible romantic lead with a wooden hand. So I think that people felt, OK, this guy's arrived. And the next thing he did, which is ironically one of my absolute favorite Nicolas Cage movies, is Vampire's Kiss, which is a movie that you could probably accurately say torpedoed his career. Well, everybody knows it's one of the great Nic Cage over-the-top performances because it's been endlessly meme-ified on social media. I also think it's an incredibly misunderstood movie. It's not about a guy who becomes a vampire. It's about a guy who is having a psychotic breakdown and thinks he's becoming a vampire. I actually think it's a really moving performance, and I think the movie has actually become much more appreciated over the almost 40 years now since it's been out. But that I think was the first one where people kind of backed off and said, what the hell is this guy doing?

Michael Small:
Well, you know, I asked him if you could do anything you wanted in the future, what would it be? And he said, I would like to do a Vampire's Kiss type movie that makes a huge amount of money and is popular.

Ty Burr:
Interesting. Well, that probably is why he was in Renfield 30 years later in which he plays Dracula, which probably made a lot more money than Vampire's Kiss, but is a much, much worse movie.

Michael Small:
As you know, he was born with the name Nicholas Coppola and he changed it to Nicholas Cage to try to not be so much in his uncle's shadow. But then of course he did do three movies with his uncle, I think. Peggy Sue Got Married, Cotton Club and Rumblefish. I did ask Nic how he felt about his relationship with his uncle and whether maybe his career moved ahead because of that. And he had an answer for me that I want to share with you and then see what you think.

[Recorded interview begins]

Nicolas Cage:
No, I'm at peace with it. It's now 12 years that I've been doing this. It's kind of old hat. I'm confident in myself that, let's say I had been tossed a ball, at least I ran with it, I didn't drop the ball, I still got the ball. So I'm comfortable there. I also happen to know that I would be working if he wasn't my uncle.

[Recorded interview ends

Michael Small:
What do you think?

Ty Burr:
I think his uncle opened a door. He still had to go through it.

Michael Small:
Yeah.

Ty Burr:
Nepotism can get you one or two roles, but it can't give you a career. But yeah, he went to Beverly Hills High. If you went to Beverly Hills High, you know, you already had, probably already had a screen test by your freshman year.

Michael Small:
He did get his first role in high school, but he hated going to Beverly Hills High, which he tells me about in the interview.

Ty Burr:
Really?

Michael Small:
And had a very difficult time there and was very uncomfortable and unhappy there and didn't feel he fit in. 

Ty Burr:
Then I amend that statement. Seriously.

Michael Small:
But one thing that we also didn't quite touch on in terms of his life being on screen, which is that his personal life was full of disruptions. He did not marry the mother of his first son. And then he was married to Patricia Arquette for I think about six years. He and Lisa Marie Presley were married for a matter of months before they started filing for divorce. Then he got married three more times. One of them again was only for a few months. I do wonder if putting so much of his life on screen maybe made it challenging to develop a stable ongoing life off screen. But you know, that's just speculation.

Ty Burr:
Well, that's it. It's speculation. And one of the things that I learned writing this book that I wrote on the history of movie stars. It's called Gods Like Us -- On Movie Stars and Modern Fame. Personas are not the person.

Michael Small:
Yes.

Ty Burr:
So it is speculation and you've talked to them. So when you meet these people in person, you get a glimpse of who they are in the real world and they may be performing within the context of an interview and that's okay. But we do not know, you know, as much as we think we know Tom Hanks, we don't know Tom Hanks.  You know, you don't know him, I don't know him. Same with Nicolas Cage. It is speculation.

Michael Small:
Yeah.

Ty Burr:
Unless you were there at the weddings, unless you were there at the divorce hearings.

Michael Small:
I think you're absolutely right. I brought it up only because we wonder about these things.

Ty Burr:
These are the only parts of these people that we know. So we think they're the real people.

Michael Small:
Yeah. One of the points I want to make about Nic Cage's life outside of the screen is that he apparently is one of the most generous Hollywood stars. He gave $2 million to Amnesty International that helped something like 300,000 refugee children. And he gave $1 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina. And he's given a lot to other causes.

Ty Burr:
Yeah. I will say that we like to laugh at and with Nicolas Cage and he's sort of a fun cultural icon and object. But at the end of the day, what matters in this world is what you do. He's making the world a better place, so bully for him.

Michael Small:
When I listened to the tape, I had not remembered our conversation at all. And as I listened to it, I just thought he was fantastic. One of the most self-aware and humble and just pleasant and in the moment people. He was acting as if he'd never heard any of these questions before. And responding in such a natural way. I thought, it'd be great to know him.

Ty Burr:
As we both know, having interviewed a number of actors and stars and celebrities over the years, they can be very, very nice people. You know, people think, they're celebrities. They're going to be egotistical monsters. For the most part, no, they're perfectly regular, normal people who are delighted to talk seriously about what they do. There's a certain art to that. And there's also, I think, a certain respect for the process of sitting down with another person to talk, and props to him for understanding that.

Michael Small:
If you were to remind people about the career of Nicolas Cage and say, you know, if you're going to watch a few of them, these are the ones I would watch.

Ty Burr:
I would watch Vampire's Kiss because I think we come to it now with an understanding of what the character is going through in a way that we didn't when it came out. People didn't know how to process it as a satire with actually a sort of tragic story in the middle of it. And I think you can parse that out now. I would say people should go back and look at Raising Arizona because he is so funny in that. And it's a reminder of his comic gifts. I would say Wild at Heart, the David Lynch film, is another, again, extreme Nicolas Cage performance. And in a good way, everybody loves to beat on the, Wicker Man and the bees. "My God, the bees," which is a, you know, a much- memed scene of his, and it's not a good movie, and it's not a great performance, and you know what? Forget about that one. Look at the things in which he was able to do what he set out to do, which is Vampire's Kiss, which is Wild at Heart, which is Leaving Las Vegas, which is Moonstruck, which is Bringing Out the Dead, a very good little known Martin Scorsese movie about ambulance workers in New York City. That is a solid, solid movie. Face Off is to me one of his best action movies where he and John Travolta play this incredibly multi-layered game of I'm going to pretend to be you. That just goes just completely out of control. Writer directors who are ambitious and have unusual projects can approach him and he can meet them on their own terms. And the double role he plays in Adaptation is an example of that. You know, and then two years later he made National Treasure. And that introduces him to a whole generation of kids and their parents. And good for him. That's money in the bank. Great. But again, I don't know that you necessarily have to see that movie because I think any other actor of his generation would be equally fine in that kind of movie. You know what my favorite Nicolas Cage movie is? And I'm not saying it's a good movie, but I adore it because it's completely insane is Knowing, the movie Knowing from 2009.

Michael Small:
I haven't heard of it.

Ty Burr:
It's kind of like a version of National Treasure on acid, where he plays a genius mathematician who figures out that this thing they unearth from a time capsule will predict, has predicted every disaster and will predict upcoming disasters. And then the aliens get involved. It's great. It's completely stupid. He plays it with a completely straight face. Like he's playing, you know, Moses in the 10 commandments. I just enjoy it so much because it's the most preposterous movie I've ever seen. And then there's his Ghost Rider movies are kind of, you know, that's the only sort of Marvel stuff he's done. They're bad, but they're interesting bad. Then there's Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call New Orleans. You should definitely see that as that is a highlight of both Werner Herzog's career and Nicolas Cage's career. And that's from 2009. Other than that, it's a pretty fallow patch until you get to Mandy, which personally, I think is a movie that's overrated, but not a bad movie. And it really was the film that introduced him to a new generation of moviegoers. So there's that. Then you get into Pig -- it's a really, really good movie. He was in this movie Long Legs last year, which was one of these neo horror films where he was the boogeyman and got great, great reviews for his performance in that. He's been rediscovered by a wave of young filmmakers in the last 10 years. In a weird way, he's become a respected elder, a bonkers respected elder for these filmmakers.

Michael Small:
You listed maybe 10 movies that you thought people should see. And I can't think of many actors where you could say there are 10 movies that you need to see.

Ty Burr:
Well, that's the upside of doing 124 movies. You have a higher rate of return, but also a higher rate of flops.

Michael Small:
That is just so helpful. And I'm going to go back and watch some of those movies, too.

Ty Burr:
I am about to watch his next film, The Surfer. From what I understand it looks to be a vigilante movie with Nicholas Cage going a little crazy, which again is what we pay to see. But I worry that he is going to start playing to that too much.

Michael Small:
Yes.

Ty Burr:
That's a danger, I think. And there have been a few too many instances, I think, in recent years where he's doing what kind of like late period Jack Nicholson did when Jack Nicholson was playing "JACK!" You know, and you're paying your money to see him be that crazy, wacky guy. And I look at Renfield where he plays Dracula. You're paying to see crazy Nic Cage rather than Nic Cage doing something crazy because that's part of the part and that's what he wants to bring to the part.

Michael Small:
So now I'm going to play my interview. But first I want to give a little background. In 1994, I was writing on a regular basis for a woman's magazine called Mademoiselle. And that was meaningful, in a way, because my grandmother wrote for Mademoiselle in the 1930s. She had something going for her that I lacked. She was a woman. And I had a really great editor there who tried to help me get the right tone for Mademoiselle, but it was a challenge. She would tell me to try to think like a teenage girl. And that was not easy for me. I was a male in my thirties. It was definitely a challenge for me. And I was assigned to do this short piece about Nic Cage and at the time he was filming Trapped in Paradise. He was near Niagara Falls in Canada. It was incredibly cold, below zero all the time. He was staying up all night to film outdoor scenes in the cold. He hadn't been married yet, but he was very anxious about being away from his son Weston, who was three years old at the time. As usual, I recorded with a suction cup attached to the handset of my phone. I didn't trust the tape recorder to work. So you hear me clacking away -- I typed while recording. 
Ty Burr:
That's what the noise was.

Michael Small:
I hope you still want to listen because we do these interviews sometimes and you talk to someone for an hour, which I did, and they use like two sentences of the interview -- this was in the magazine days and so much gets lost. And that's why when I look at this tape and go, am I just going to throw it out?  There was all this stuff from Nicolas Cage that no one would ever hear. And he took the time to talk with me. Did you ever find that to be true with your interviews?

Ty Burr:
All the time, especially when you were talking to interesting people. Let's say when I've talked to Jodie Foster, who is an incredibly intelligent, funny, talkative person. And you're right, you end up just taking a tiny portion of it and using it for the piece.

Michael Small:
Well, I'm going to play about 30 minutes of the tape. Some of it I had to cut because the audio wasn't good enough and other parts were just tedious. But I hope everyone enjoys listening to it. So here it is.

[Recorded interview begins]

Michael Small:
You've said before, "I don't prepare for my roles, I over-prepare" or something like that.

Nicolas Cage:
That's interesting. I don't remember saying I don't prepare, I over-prepare. I must have said that when I was quite young, I was quite a bit more arrogant. I don't think I prepare the way I used to prepare. One of the things I remember was, Federico Fellini had said, he knows he's ready to make a movie when he's sick of the movie. That was a quote that always stayed with me.

Michael Small: 
When you have the script in advance now, do you memorize your lines each day or do you have the whole thing down when you start shooting?

Nicolas Cage:
If the scene is well written, then you really don't have to worry too much about the lines because they seem to come naturally. When a scene is poorly written, then I really struggle. I have to go over and over.

Michael Small:
Do you look at the script yourself and say, the writing's not good enough, I ain't doing this?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah. I've also looked at the script and said, the writing's okay. I think I could do something with it and try to make it better.

Michael Small:
There are a lot of actors out there who really go for roles that always make them look good. You seem to risk going against that. Do you agree with me that you're willing to take roles that don't make you look good? And if so, why are you willing to do that?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it is always exciting to me when I see an actor do something that's kind of self-effacing and self-deprecating because it's not standard. It's not what is expected of an actor. That's not to say that you can't do a role that makes you look good. I believe in that too.

Michael Small:
Have you ever been tempted to just pick like a typical romantic lead macho guy?

Nicolas Cage:
The thing about it is, I don't believe these characters are written believably. Certainly my life has shown me great deal of pathos and troubles and I think that yeah, there's something to be said about romantic comedies. I like them. I want to make them. But there has to be a certain amount of struggle, a certain amount of conflict going on and otherwise to me it doesn't ring true. And so for me to play just a super stud who's got everything together and can have any girls is not real.

Michael Small:
It seems like you're very sensitive about being a braggart. Did you feel you went overboard the other way when you were younger and less experienced?

Nicolas Cage:
I don't know really what happened. I grew up in a family where there was a lot of bragging going on. What I adopted from my family was characteristics, but as I got older, I was more objective about it. But, well, I don't want to be like that. I don't want to sound like that. So I've kind of tried to make a conscious effort not to. And the fact of the matter is I really don't think I'm great. I mean, I don't really know where I fall objectively, what my image is. I don't know if I should think too much about it.

Michael Small:
Is there something that keeps you going? You're trying to push harder to get to something that you're not quite there yet?

Nicolas Cage:
I want to be able to make a movie that makes, you know, $200 million and it's Vampire's Kiss. I want to make the alternative movie that breaks all the rules and tries everything that no one could ever imagine.

Michael Small:
One of the other things you said earlier, you said, you know, in your own life there has been pathos or whatever, conflict.

Nicolas Cage:
It's like, I've gone through divorce, I've gone through, but you know, my mother was not well, and my childhood growing up, my life consists of going in a mental institution to visit her. You know, that kind of stuff I grew up with at a very early age. It does tend to tint the world a certain color, and maybe that's of the reason why I'm hesitant to, I don't really believe in super perfect people.

Michael Small:
When I was reading about you, I was thinking, now wait a minute, this guy is smart. He left school at 17. I know you got your graduate equivalent degree, but it seems like there was some disruption.

Nicolas Cage:
I hated high school with all my passion.

Michael Small:
Why?

Nicolas Cage:
Because I grew up without money. I didn't have any money and my life is this weird grouping of strange mishaps. I grew up without any money. My father didn't make money. Was a teacher at the time, professor, brilliant man. But you don't make millions of dollars as a teacher, but he wanted me to have a good education. So we moved to Beverly Hills and we live in this little apartment on the corner of Hamilton Drive and La Cienega, and the Great Western Savings Building. Right on the sign that says you are now in Beverly Hills. I could go to Beverly Hills High School. This is the honest to God truth. I'm at high school and I want to ask girls out. I want to go on a date. They won't go on a date with me because I don't have a fast car. I don't drive the Porsches and the Ferraris that all my classmates are going to school in because their parents are wealthy. I'm taking the bus to school. That pissed me off. I hated high school. I hated the popularity contest. I hated the prom queen and the prom king. The who is going to get voted as what. And that's also why I don't like the Academy Awards. Because that to me is high school.

Michael Small:
Have you won one?

Nicolas Cage:
I haven't been nominated, and I don't really care. I'd love to get something because it would do great wonders for my quote.

Michael Small:
You were a good looking guy then, I  mean didn't that overcome the other stuff or in Beverly Hills, it just doesn't matter?

Speaker 1 (28:56.566)
No, the fact is I finally got a little job, TV, and I got $6,000. And I bought myself a little yellow Triumph Spitfire. It was a used car and whatever. I had that, and I had a girlfriend. She was very nice. But still,  for a while it was frustrating. This car kept breaking down, and I went to hell with this stupid little car that never worked and I was always going to stupid mechanics in Hollywood, trying to rip me off. Every dime I made I had to give to some bullshit mechanic.

Michael Small:
So I imagine you watch Beverly Hills 90210 all the time now.

Nicolas Cage:
First time a week ago.

Michael Small:
How well did it recreate?

Nicolas Cage:
It didn't recreate it that well. Not the way I see it.

Michael Small:
In sharp contrast, you have now played romantic scenes with Cher, Holly Hunter, Kathleen Turner. Is this just acting? Does it do anything for your ego? Are you there thinking, oh my god, this is the greatest thing, I can't believe I've made it this far, you know, like, this is the greatest. Or are you just like, eh, she's an actor, I'm an actor, it's not us, we're just playing roles, I don't care.

Nicolas Cage:
Well, I mean both. I think it's great to have been lucky enough to work with such a talented group of women. I think there's a kind of irony in it though, because I never planned it that way. It sort of happened to me. I don't know why it did. Certainly I've worked with more interesting and talented women than men.

Michael Small:
Were you ever intimidated by doing a scene with with an incredibly beautiful woman?

Nicolas Cage:
Depends how I'm gonna play the scene. I can't think so. I don't think so.

Michael Small:
What about with Shirley MacLaine?

Nicolas Cage:
I was nervous to meet her. There's such a body of work there. And she transcends generations. So I was uncertain about who I was going to be working with. They said, she's going to be so tough. I remember I met her and she looked at me and she didn't say a word to me. She looked at me and I thought, well, perhaps she doesn't know it's me. And she just sort of kept talking. So I said, Hi, Shirley. And she looked at me and she kept talking. The she said Oh hi, Nic! Very sweet. I was very nervous. But when we started working, I found her to be ultra serious about the work, but also extremely playful, like a child and a kind of a kindred spirit in that way. Somebody I could relate to, laugh with. She's a prankster, ultimately. She cracks jokes with toilet humor. She's very open-minded to everything. She's a great believer in mysteries of the universe, as we know. And if there's only a lot of human beings.

Michael Small:
You both can be very hyperkinetic on screen, but from what my editor told me, who saw the screening, she said that you seemed both fairly or comparatively restrained.

Nicolas Cage:
I was playing a very restrained kind of person being a Secret Service.

Michael Small:
Did you meet any?

Nicolas Cage:
Yes, I did. I went to Washington. I went through the White House. Found it quite interesting how serious they take their jobs.

Michael Small:
I've seen you play a big range. I mean, I haven't seen the Secret Service, but certainly that's a huge change from Raising Arizona. Is it really tough to shift like that? I mean, that's the total opposite end of the spectrum. How the hell do you do that?

Nicolas Cage:
I'm 30 years old now and I'm a father and that gave me a whole new range of emotions. It's taken me a in terms of the way I hold myself and the responsibilities I feel in my life. And I think I'm more ready to play a guy like Doug Chesnic, a Secret Service agent, just because I'm older. There's things about those characters that I did in the past that I don't know exactly what it was that I was doing. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it again.

Michael Small:
One of the things I've noticed from your roles is you go through a hell of a lot. And I'm curious in terms of playing these roles. Can you fire a gun? Did someone have to teach you?

Nicolas Cage:
I can fire a gun, I can, yeah. Why?

Michael Small:
Because you just fire a lot of guns in your movies and I saw you with a lot of guns and I was thinking for me that would be a hard thing to do. Did you learn about it through acting or could you already do it?

Nicolas Cage:
I was always a good marksman. When I would go to camp, I would take rifle and that was something I was better at than, say, football.

Michael Small:
Also, what about your bad leg in Red Rock West? Is that something that's really hard to, like, remember? Do you have to bruise your knee so you never forget it?

Nicolas Cage:
That bad leg was written into the script and I never really understood why John Dahl, the writer-director, was so keen on having Michael have a bad leg. I didn't know how that would propel the character. But I thought, well, I'm playing a pretty straightforward guy who's gotta be the through line to the script and I'm surrounded by all these fascinating characters. So I thought, well, I've got this bad leg, I might as well play it because pain, playing pain is interesting. So I thought, well, okay, then I'm gonna really try to get into the pain.

Michael Small:
You did. I felt it too. What about, this movie just sparks things, like for instance, do you smoke? Is it hard to smoke in a movie if you don't smoke all the time?

Nicolas Cage:
I was smoking at the time that I made Red Rock West. I quit two years ago. Right around the time I finished Red Rock West and now I'm smoking in this movie, but I'm smoking herbal.

Michael Small:
Like, what about your hair in Raising Arizona? Did that happen naturally or was that a lot of work?

Nicolas Cage:
I remember I used to rub my scalp with my hand and my hair would stick up and just from electricity.

Michael Small:
So it was your idea?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, see the thing was in Raising Arizona I wanted the guy to look more and more like Woody Woodpecker and Woody Woodpecker had this kind of wonderful red hair that would stand up.

Michael Small:
You seem to have these just really physical roles. Are you ever asked to do something that you achieved only through great strength of will or something?

Nicolas Cage:
There was this one scene in the Guarding Tess, the hospital scene. It's like an eight page scene and it goes on and on and on and my character kind of after maintaining a certain amount of sleek and self-contained attitude throughout the movie just really loses it and sort of explodes. I remember the weather was really erratic the week that I had to that scene and I thought I had a week to prepare for the scene. Something went wrong with the weather and they said we've got to shoot the hospital scene tomorrow. And I didn't have any time to prepare and I got very agitated and thinking well, I mean that's kind of a shock, it's an eight page scene and I don't really know yet how to play it. And what it was was really fear, fear to have to go there. One the most difficult things about acting is having to dig in and go to a place that I don't really want to go to. I don't really want to strip down and bring all the muck. And this was one of those scenes where I had to do that, and I didn't really want to do that.

Michael Small:
Did it go okay?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, I'm happy with it. I am happy with it, but I find it's getting more and more difficult to do that.

Michael Small:
In one of the articles I read, they said you're a lead character actor. Do you like that?

Nicolas Cage:
I like that. Yeah. That sounds to me like what I've admired in my favorite actors, Jack Nicholson and DeNiro. These are actors that know how to... They can carry a movie, but they're playing different kinds of characters.

Michael Small:
You're going in and out of these movies with new people all the time. Each time it's a new group of people. Have you stayed friends with any of these people?

Nicolas Cage:
None.

Michael Small:
Whoa. None. Does that bother you?

Nicolas Cage:
I don't know why that is. It's almost like a phenomenon. You know, movies, you're so close to everybody when you're making the movie. You're all working together. You're like this little capsule. Perhaps in the back of everyone's mind, there's a knowledge that we're doing this now, but we're not going do this again. I find that particularly with the actors, the friendships that are formed on the set don't carry over into life, probably because we're asked to be playing like we've known each other for so long and there's this underlying threat of artificiality. So that becomes rejected in life.

Michael Small:
Does this career make you into more of a loner that you're constantly shifting between different groups of people?

Nicolas Cage:
I am more of a loner, I mean, I have friends that I see let's say maybe twice a year, a friend two days out of the year, a friend from the past.  I've lost a lot of friends time goes by. Who knows why. Tom Waits used to be very close friend of mine. He is no longer a friend of mine. I don't know where he is. You know people come and go. I'm close friends with Charlie Sheen but that, you know work, and what not. It's like he's away working, I'm away working. It's just very hard to maintain a friendship. In the six months that I'm back before I go away and make another movie, I don't really enjoy going out. But the times that I do go out, there'll be this thing called Paparazzi TV, and they'll shove the camera, video camera in your face, and then suddenly you're on Hard Copy.

Michael Small:
Does your job keep you so challenged that you're up and excited all the time? Can you still have sources of anxiety in your daily life?

Nicolas Cage:
Oh God, yeah.

Michael Small:
What kinds of things would give a successful movie star anxiety?

Nicolas Cage:
Am I making the right decision? I have enormous anxiety that I'm away from my son when I'm working. I worry so much that I can't see him as much as I would want to. Whenever you have the responsibility of parenting, you have anxiety. Am I making the right decisions with my career? Will another job come? Am I going to lose everything that I've worked hard for? Will everything fall apart into the ocean because I can't pay the bills?

Michael Small:
When you said the anxiety about your son, does he actually live with you part time?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, because see, he's going be to school soon and I gotta go and my work always takes me away and I have anxiety about that. But I gotta pay the bills and this is what I do. I'll talk to my psychiatrist or this woman who I was speaking to about it. And they said even soldiers would go away and it's okay. His mother's doing a good job. Don't worry.

Michael Small:
Along the anxiety line, do you ever worry about your looks? It seems like something a movie star would have to worry about, but you seem sort of calm about it.

Nicolas Cage:
I am calm about it only because I mean I've never felt like I was a real a raving beauty. I've never had to rely on it. It's not really the impetus of my work. The characters I play don't have to be handsome. Sometimes they have to be a little better looking than other times.

Michael Small:
In some of those articles that came out a year or two ago, I don't know, you were talking about how you still were looking for a partner. Have you found a girlfriend? Is she a school teacher, which is what you said you were looking for? Did you hear from a lot of school teachers? 

Nicolas Cage: 
No, I didn't.

Michael Small:
You didn't?

Nicolas Cage:
I didn't hear from school teachers. I thought that I would meet school teachers when I started driving my son to school.

Michael Small:
So are you involved with anybody now?

Nicolas Cage:
I am.

Michael Small:
Like, is she an actress, if she if she's not a school teacher?

Nicolas Cage:
She's not an actress, no. She's just very, she's a together person, You know, and she's very young, but she's very stable and I like that in my life. There's nothing crazy or weird about her and that's refreshing for me.

Michael Small:
Do you live together? Is it that serious? 

Nicolas Cage:
We're living together.

Michael Small:
Have you known each other for a long time?

Nicolas Cage:
We've been going out now a year and a half.

Michael Small:
I do want to ask on the privacy question, do you have some ambivalence about the fame that comes along with being an actor? Journalists always say, well, when you decide to be an actor, you stepped into the public eye and you lost your privacy. That's part of the job. How do you feel about that?

Nicolas Cage:
Well there's some truth to that, isn't there? When you do decide to become an actor, you have to expect a certain amount of press and invasion of privacy. Otherwise, you know, don't become a film actor. You know, I was not prepared for it, but I got better at it. I've been in the public eye for a better part of my life now, and I've become more accustomed to it. It's kind of like second nature. Yeah, I'm comfortable with it now. There are times when you have to make a real conscious effort. Like, don't go out unless you know there's going to be a certain amount of autographs or a certain amount of cameras or Paparazzi TV. Don't go out unless I prepare myself for that. I'm a very shy guy. I'm not gregarious. I don't really know how to be. So if I go out and I'm not prepared, it can be, it can backfire. I know if I'm going to step out that I'm going to have conversations and assume there's going to be a camera in my face. I've got to expect that to happen. It's just the way it's going to be. If I'm not up for it, I just don't go out.

Michael Small:
I need to ask a few biographical things. First off, in one of your interviews, you said if you were to write the story of your life, it would be called Back Off: Lobster on the Loose? What the hell?

Nicolas Cage:
Back off, there's a lobster loose.

Michael Small:
Does that have meaning that I...

Nicolas Cage:
I really don't know. I mean, it just sounded funny to me. It's an abstract kind of metaphor. It was more or less something that I knew my friends would read and crack up. There's a lobster loose in some way means a little bit about my life. I've always felt a little bit different. You know, I've always felt loose.

Michael Small:
Do you have brothers and sisters?

Nicolas Cage:
I have two older brothers, Mark and Christopher.

Michael Small:
And are either of them actors?

Nicolas Cage:
Mark was a radio personality in New York for many years and now he's trying to get into the acting.

Michael Small:
So his last name was Coppola?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, they're both still Coppola.


Michael Small:
And Christopher is in another career. 

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah. He's now looking into directing. He did a movie called Dead Fall that I did with him actually.

Michael Small:
Why, when you were younger, were you considering joining the Merchant Marines? Are you into sailing or boats or something?

Nicolas Cage:
I am into the ocean, I always have been. I was at a point where I had so much rejection as a young man trying to become an actor that I remember I became very ill and I made a decision in the hospital because I can't handle any more rejection. I'll try one more time and if it doesn't work then I'm gonna go away and join the Merchant Marines and I thought that I would write and I often wonder what my life would be like.

Michael Small:
Let me tell you. Don't try to reverse that one. The writing is not the way to go no matter what your father told you. I know he was wanted you to do that. 

Nicolas Cage:
Why isn't it?

Michael Small:
Would you like to measure the one room that I live in?

Nicolas Cage:
But think of all the creative satisfaction you get to have because you have all the control.

Michael Small:
Forget it. I spend my days doing interviews to try to support my playwriting and then I never have time for the playwriting because I have to do the interviews, you know, it's no...

Nicolas Cage:
What about those writers, those who are the great heroes like Poe and Kafka and Rimbaud, these were men that were discovered later, there's a certain romance to them.

Michael Small:
The grass is always greener. I read somewhere you're still scribbling your notebook. What are you scribbling? Are you writing screenplays? Are you writing poems? Are you the next Rimbaud?

Nicolas Cage:
I just have my daily, my morning pages, you know, just to keep sane. Which I haven't actually done in the last month and a half. It's not good. I have to do it.

Michael Small:
Did you go back for any more school afterwards where you picked up your Rimbaud and all that stuff?

Nicolas Cage:
It was just on my own. I haven't read anything either in a while. I definitely need to put stuff back in. When your job is to put out, to speak, it's important to re-nourish the soul. I haven't done that, so I need to... And the way to do that is to read and to have private moments, you know, going to a library, doing something as long as you're alone and sort of restore the battery. And I haven't done that yet. I need that. I need to find a groovy piece of music that I've discovered on my own. You know, I thought surfing would be great, but it's too hard.

Michael Small:
When you said groovy piece of music, are you still listening to Wagner and stuff like that or are you listening to Radiohead or both?

Nicolas Cage:
No, I was listening, I mean, Wagner's great, in fact I just ordered a copy of Parsifal. I love the overture to that. Really a beautiful piece of music. And I also, I'm a Beatlemaniac, just wanna listen to that and I'll check out what's happening that's new. I know my girlfriend loves Smashing Pumpkins, I hear that a lot.

Michael Small:
Today is the greatest.

Nicolas Cage:
It's not one of my favorite. 

Michael Small:
You gotta listen to Radiohead.

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, "I'm a creep" is good.


Michael Small:
Yeah, I loved that song, but the whole album, it had some good songs on that album. And what about, is there a favorite author, poet, somebody that you go back to or loved or remember loving?


Nicolas Cage:
Yeah. Well lately I've enjoyed Henry Miller and Tropic of Capricorn.

Michael Small:
He's incredible. Hard to take.

Nicolas Cage:
He goes on these diatribes, these tangents that are so... There are things about him that I obviously don't like, which is, you know, his anti-semitism. But then he goes off on these surreal diatribes in the middle of the book, and they go on and they add a kind of surrealist dream state.

Michael Small:
What was your dad's specialty in literature?

Nicolas Cage:
My father, he's kind of like the adventure writer in one way because I remember he blindfolded himself for three months and lived in total darkness to learn what it was like to be a blind man who was going to write a novel about a man who agreed to willingly live in total darkness.

Michael Small:
Did he write the novel?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, it's called The Intimacy. A love story about a Vietnam veteran and a ballerina who are part of an experiment to live in total darkness and their sort of psychosexual experiences.


Michael Small:
I was confused about one other thing. You did start off by taking, I guess, a summer of acting at ACT. Was that when you were still living in LA? I'm confused about where you grew up.

Nicolas Cage:
I did, yes.  What happened was, I grew up in LA. I lived in Long Beach, and then I moved. I was getting straight A's in high school. And then my father said he wanted me to go live with my uncle for a year. He took me out of high school and he put me up in Napa Valley where I lived with Francis and Eleanor. Because Francis' son and I were very good friends. So I lived there. But I went from straight A's to straight F's. I don't know why.

Michael Small:
What grade were you in?

Nicolas Cage:
I was a sophomore. I was hurt. I didn't know where my father was. I didn't know what was going on.

Michael Small:
In one of things I read, it said that you're into meditation. Are you still into that?

Nicolas Cage:
I read about theology and things like that and various religions, but I've never really practiced that.

Michael Small:
So you're not meditating every day.

Nicolas Cage:
No, but I probably should be.

Michael Small:
This interview may change your life. Also, there was something about painting. Now, are you still going to museums all the time? Do you have painters or abstract conceptual artists or anybody that you're following now?

Nicolas Cage:
Hotrod art. I'm Robert Williams. I really like his stuff. I've collected some of his pieces. He's become very popular now in Los Angeles with the Laguna Art Museum. He had a show called Truckin' Culture. And it's something that's very close to my youth. When I was a child, I would go to the round-the-corner market and buy these bubble gum cards.  All these like Big Daddy, Ralph, Rat Fink, Monsters coming out of these hot rods.

Michael Small:
Yeah, I remember those.

Nicolas Cage:
Well now that stuff and the artists that were connected to all that have become kind of like icons of a modern culture and are now very fashionable. And Robert Williams is one of the artists that I collect.

Michael Small:
I have just have a few more quick questions. With Dana Carvey and John Lovitz and you all on the same set, are funny things happening?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah.  I mean, there's certainly some kidding around going on. The other night, we all had problems keeping a straight face, and we were breaking and laughing in the scene quite a bit. And eventually, it got to the point where we had to make a conscious effort to not look at each other.

Michael Small:
So you're on a night schedule now working through the night with the filming?

Nicolas Cage:
Yeah, it's all night scenes. We're shooting exterior nights. And that means that we're outside for 12 hours. It's actually the weather's been like 30 below. So we sleep during the day and then we get up and go to work around five or six.

Michael Small:
See, I asked you how hard your job was and you didn't even mention that.

Nicolas Cage:
I'll be looking forward to seeing the sun again, I can tell you that.

Michael Small:
So the final thing then would be is there something that you're looking forward to with your career with the kinds of movies you want to do?

Nicolas Cage:
I'm looking forward to really holding out and getting back to a more alternative kind of role. I'm thinking about taking a few months off and just waiting for something special and unique that doesn't really tie into any particular format. I'm looking for something that will combine art and commerce.

[End of recorded interview]

Michael Small:
So there's my interview with Nicolas Cage from 31 years ago. After the interview was done, I asked him, was he okay with how it went? And he said to me, "Yeah, that was good. It wasn't fake." Which made me happy.

Ty Burr:
There's something to be said for having that audio and being able to hear that voice and hear the room tone, even with the type type type and what was going on in the room.

Michael Small:
Thank you. That is just what I was hoping you would say. And it is now time to decide what to do with this tape. I don't love parting with this. On the other hand, I did clean up the audio a lot for what you heard, such as it was, and this tape doesn't sound that great. This is a time when I'm almost thinking, we keep the digital and this tape goes in the trash. Ty, any thoughts?

Ty Burr:
I think you should keep the digital, certainly. Decluttering is good as long as you keep the digital.

Michael Small:
Okay. I mean, people are not used to me throwing things out because like when it was Joni Mitchell, I just couldn't let go of it. I had to keep it.

Ty Burr:
That's a talisman. I understand. Yeah.

Michael Small:
But this is a hard to hear phone interview, which I hope I improved enough. And I am thinking I am going to throw it out.

Ty Burr:
Throw the tape out. You have my blessings.

Michael Small:
And those people who have said to me, never throw anything out, please remember this moment. We've got a few other things here that I need to ask Ty because you have similar experiences. We have my original version of what I sent to Mademoiselle magazine. And then we have the actual article that appeared. I don't think Mademoiselle exists anymore. So this article is not easy to find. It seems to have almost nothing to do with the text that I submitted.

Ty Burr:
Par for the course.

Michael Small:
You know, I have to say the text that I submitted, I thought it was okay. My first sentence was, Nicholas Cage used to collect twisted film rolls the way he once collected monster trading cards as a kid.

Ty Burr:
Works for me.

Michael Small:
I thought that was a good way to start.

Ty Burr:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
And they started with "Being the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola has its advantages."

Ty Burr:
Of course. You got to get the more famous name in there.

Michael Small:
Yeah.

Ty Burr:
I understand why they did it. But I don't agree.

Michael Small:
And he also talked to me for an hour, as I said, and this is sort of like a one-third column in Mademoiselle. He must not have been particularly happy. And they turned it into a Q &A with just a few questions.

Ty Burr:
Yeah.

Michael Small:
A tiny fragment of what I got from my interview. So Ty, what are your feelings about saving the original article that I wrote? Doesn't really have much value.

Ty Burr:
It sounds like you want to get rid of it. It sounds like the thing that you experienced was the interview, which you have the digital of and a transcript of, but this has been through so much of the editorial mix master that it doesn't really have any personal resonance to you. Sounds like.

Michael Small:
Yeah. And, know, I think I'm going to throw out my notes and the original thing, throw out the tape. And that is more throwing out than I've ever done. And it may be because I have the excellent influence of Ty Burr in my life at this moment.

Ty Burr:
Glad I could help. You are more than welcome to come by my storage unit and look at all my crap and say, "No, that's gotta go, that's gotta go, that's gotta go."

Michael Small:
It hurts a little, but what's done is done. And thank you, Ty, for sharing your thoughts and guidance. It was just wonderful to speak with you again. And as a reminder to everyone, you can get more guidance about new and old movies. And all you have to do is subscribe to Ty Burr's Watchlist. It's at TyBurrsWatchlist.com.  And that's T-Y.

Ty Burr:
B-U-R-R-S-W-A-T-C-H-L-I-S-T dot com. It would have been The Watch List dot com, but a bank had the trademark for that. So.

Michael Small:
Those banks, they always get everything first. And speaking of newsletters, you can find out about all upcoming episodes of I Couldn't Throw It Out by subscribing to our newsletter too. You can sign up at throwitoutpodcast.com. Thank you, Ty. Let's go watch some movies.

Ty Burr:
Okay. I'm on to The Surfer. Take care.

Michael Small:
Bye!

Ty Burr:
Bye.

[Theme song begins]

I Couldn't Throw It Out theme song
Performed by Don Rauf, Boots Kamp and Jen Ayers
Written by Don Rauf and Michael Small
Produced and arranged by Boots Kamp

Look up that stairway
To my big attic
Am I a hoarder
Or am I a fanatic?

Decades of stories
Memories stacked
There is a redolence
Of some irrelevant facts

Well, I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
It all seems so unjust
But still I know I must
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out

I'll sort through my possessions
In these painful sessions
I guess this is what it's about
The poems, cards and papers
The moldy musty vapors
I just gotta sort it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out
I couldn't throw it out

[Theme song ends]

END TRANSCRIPT