Nicolas Cage found becoming a meme frustrating, but has learned to roll with it
Nic Cage put his feelings about being meme'd into his latest film Dream Scenario
Aux News Nicolas Cage
Few actors alive or dead have created a body of work as fascinating and outrageous as Nicolas Cage. As rich as his resumé is, it has also opened him up to a very particular form of attention on the Internet. “I might have been the first actor who went through a kind of meme-ification,” he says in a new interview with The Guardian. “One person had cherrypicked from all these different movies where I was having meltdowns, but without any regard for how the character got to that place. I was frustrated because I didn’t know what people were taking from the movies other than that.”
Whatever you may think of the result, Cage is a guy who cares about the craft, so having his work get decontextualized in that way didn’t sit well. “I didn’t understand how to process what was happening. I got into acting because I was moved by film performance more than any other art form. I didn’t get into movies to become a meme. That was new. I made friends with it but it was an adjustment,” the Oscar winner explains. “I thought maybe they would compel someone to go back and look at the movies. But I had no control over it.”
The silver lining is that the consummate actor could translate the experience into his work. “The same thing happens with Paul in Dream Scenario: he has no control over this inexplicable phenomenon,” Cage says of his latest film, directed by Kristopher Borgli.
Speaking on the topic when the film premiered earlier this year at TIFF (via Deadline), Cage says he kept looking at the “Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit” compilation and thinking “‘What is happening to me?’” He shared, “I sat there, and it started going in this memeification, with photoshopping and T-shirts, and I said, ‘I gotta put this somewhere, and then I read Dream Scenario and I said ‘Yes, now I can turn this lead into a little bit of gold!’”
19 Comments
Given how much he needed to work to get out of debt, I expect this became somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Low-budget producers and directors knew he was available, and wanted him to do something notable that would get their films noticed one way or another. Of course he seeded that reputation with some pretty out-there performances.
In his defense a bit, he did have some amazingly good performances sprinkled in there, in films like Pig and Mandy.
Those are both excellent films and proof that Cage is a treasure
Oh for sure, but I still expect many of those producers and directors hired him for the purpose of getting some gonzo moments that brought attention to an otherwise mediocre film.
“Whatever you may think of the result, Cage is a guy who cares about the craft,”Well, that sure isn’t universal, as he just hammed his way through Gone in Sixty Seconds.Although I do give him props for insisting on doing most of the stunt driving for the Eleanor scenes, if not every single scene.
Cage says he kept looking at the “Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit” compilation and thinking “‘What is happening to me?’”
To see how Cage said this, skip to 2:17 in the video in the article.
Nic Cage becoming a meme has been frustrating for me, too. There’s a small but persistent contingent of “fans” that you’ll find in most any screening of Pig or Mandy just snickering every time he opens his mouth. It’s a bummer.
I still say Joe, Mandy, and Pig are the best performances the man has given in decades.
Try being a fan of Joan Crawford.
I just realized I don’t think I’ve ever seen Nic Cage or Christopher Walken in the same room…There’s your meme.
Nic Cage rules. Great actor. Face Off, Raising Arizona, Wild At Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, and Bad Lieutenant 2 prove he is the GOAT.
The first Nic Cage meme that I remember.
awww, actually, back in animation school, my friends and I would often cite him as an inspiration. Sure, it’s a bit humerious, but even his movements were always inspiring for animation
On the other hand, they were performances so powerful, Nicolas Cage broke the otherwise immovable Abed Nadir.
Losing his shit looks pretty much the same from movie to movie unless you want to separate the ones where he laughs maniacally. I’ve been watching his meltowns since Vampire’s Kiss and none were as good as that. I don’t think there there’s anyting deep there and it looks like he taking the piss by suggesting that.
Cage has been a meme for many years. Ghostrider, head in a cage full of bees, erc. I spent a week seven years ago on Jezebel posting a Cage meme for every occassion.
The good old days…
I can see why it would be hard for Cage to appreciate or contextualize being the object of this kind of attention. I mean, he occupies such a weird place in popular culture where he’s legitimately admired and held up as an object of absurdity—and kind of beloved for both qualities. There’s both derision and affection in the mockery (and I’d argue way more affection), and when you see yourself being framed as ridiculous and a sort of mascot for unhinged acting, it’s got to be hard to see how it’s anything more than a diss.
You can feel real sympathy with what he’s saying, but then you watch that compilation video and… c’mon, Nic. Context doesn’t fully explain this stuff.