Nicolas Cage takes a walk down memory lane as he rewatches scenes from his classic works including 'Moonstruck,' 'Leaving Las Vegas,' 'National Treasure,' 'Dream Scenario,' 'Face Off,' 'Con Air' and more. Nic dishes on the full background story behind his missing teeth in 'Moonstruck,' getting into Albert Finney's character for 'Leaving Las Vegas,' becoming a meme through 'National Treasure' and so much more.
Director: Funmi Sunmonu
Director of Photography: Dominik Czaczyk
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Nicolas Cage
Producer: Juliet Lopez
Coordinating Producer: Sydney Malone
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Emembeit Beyene
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi and Kevin Balach
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Lucas Vilicich
Gaffer: Osiris Larkin
Sound : Justin Fox
Production Assistant: Philip Arliss and Lauren Boucher
Set Designer: Leah Waters-Katz
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Lauren Worona
Director: Funmi Sunmonu
Director of Photography: Dominik Czaczyk
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Nicolas Cage
Producer: Juliet Lopez
Coordinating Producer: Sydney Malone
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Emembeit Beyene
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi and Kevin Balach
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Lucas Vilicich
Gaffer: Osiris Larkin
Sound : Justin Fox
Production Assistant: Philip Arliss and Lauren Boucher
Set Designer: Leah Waters-Katz
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Lauren Worona
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 - I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.
00:02 - I can't even say it without laughing.
00:04 I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence
00:05 because it has been memed so many times,
00:08 but you can't help but laugh.
00:10 Hi, I'm Nicolas Cage,
00:12 and I'm gonna rewatch some scenes throughout my filmography.
00:16 I haven't seen these scenes in a very long time,
00:18 so whatever happens to me, it'll be in real time.
00:21 Here goes.
00:22 Boom.
00:23 (dramatic music)
00:26 (dramatic music)
00:29 - He ordered bread for me, and I said,
00:38 "Oh, okay, some bread."
00:40 And I put my hand in the slicer, and it got caught.
00:44 It's funny, 'cause when my fiancee found out about it,
00:47 when she found out that I'd been memed,
00:50 she left me for another man.
00:51 - Wow, a couple things come to mind.
00:54 Brooklyn accent, I worked on that quite a bit,
00:56 'cause originally I was talking with Jean Marais
00:59 in "Beauty and the Beast," but he was in French,
01:01 but I was trying to give it that growl,
01:02 but I dialed that back 'cause I wanted to keep my job.
01:05 - That's not Johnny's fault.
01:07 - I don't care!
01:09 I ain't no freakin' monument to justice!
01:12 It was shocking, you know, that,
01:13 oh, when the anger hit, I remember Norman Jewison said,
01:17 "Well, you can get really hot really fast on camera."
01:20 I lost my hand!
01:22 I lost my pride!
01:23 That moment where I'm going, "I lost my hand!
01:27 "I lost my pride!
01:29 "Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his pride!"
01:31 That was a designed, rather choreographed move
01:34 that I got from an old Fritz Lang movie called "Metropolis,"
01:39 where the mad scientist takes off the glove
01:41 and shows his robot hand.
01:43 So that was a direct steal.
01:44 I was very impressionable when I first saw
01:46 Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."
01:48 That moment with the scientist made a real impact on me,
01:51 and it's designed, it's choreographed,
01:53 and that's what German expressionism was, in my view,
01:56 was like almost choreographed acting.
01:58 I tried to put in that, you know,
02:00 the moment of looking up at the hand
02:02 and seeing it was a very grandiose gesture, but it worked.
02:06 Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his pride!
02:08 You want me to take my heartbreak, put it away, and forget?
02:11 Oh, the tooth is missing.
02:13 So what happened there is I had baby teeth.
02:16 I had done a picture called "Birdie,"
02:18 and I decided to pull my baby teeth out
02:21 for that character, Al Combato,
02:24 but then they hadn't grown in yet,
02:27 so when I did "Moonstruck," you still see a gaping hole.
02:30 Is it just a matter of time before a man opens his eyes
02:35 and gives up his one dream?
02:39 My feeling was you can do anything.
02:46 You can get as big as you want.
02:47 You can get as expressionistic as you want.
02:50 As long as it's informed with genuine emotion.
02:54 All right, let's see what's next.
02:56 [upbeat music]
02:59 [dramatic music]
03:05 No!
03:12 No, fuck you, fuck!
03:14 No, fuck it!
03:15 [yells]
03:19 It's hard to watch.
03:20 I'd seen Albert Finney in "Under the Volcano."
03:24 I asked Mike Figgis, who directed him in another picture,
03:27 did Albert drink while he was working?
03:29 Albert Finney is a huge inspiration to me,
03:31 and he said, "No, but tell Nick I would taste it,
03:34 "and then I'd spit it out."
03:35 I'd seen several movies with great alcoholic performances.
03:40 The only one where I really said,
03:41 "That guy's really drunk," was Albert Finney
03:43 walking through the streets of Mexico
03:45 at the beginning of "Under the Volcano."
03:46 So I made a decision that at some point in the movie,
03:51 I wanna see if I can get a real blackout on camera.
03:55 Dangerous, crazy, I would never do it again.
03:58 I don't act with alcohol or anything, I act dry.
04:01 And we only had four weeks to shoot the movie.
04:03 If it had gone on for six months,
04:04 it would have been a disaster.
04:06 But I wanted to take that scene and really get loaded.
04:10 I was not loaded through the rest of the picture.
04:12 I mean, I would have a drink here or there
04:14 just to get a sense of, like,
04:15 the Albert Finney would spit it out, get a vibe.
04:17 Had a drinking coach named Tony Dingman, family friend,
04:21 at the time, a drunk, a poet.
04:22 We were drinking Sambuca,
04:24 and he thought that would be a good choice for this scene.
04:26 So I was drinking the Sambuca, and I went downstairs,
04:30 and I was like, "Whatever happens, get it,
04:33 "because this isn't gonna happen again."
04:35 [yelling]
04:37 - You dare to judge me!
04:42 You lie to me!
04:43 [yelling]
04:45 - I had developed a sense of backstory for Ben,
04:49 which is that he had gone through a divorce,
04:53 was trying to get custody of his son.
04:56 And in my own life, I was really trying to get
04:58 that one day out of the week to see my kid at the time.
05:01 And it was something that I knew was in the body,
05:05 and I knew it was in the character for Ben.
05:09 So when I went downstairs and we shot the scene,
05:12 that's the result.
05:13 And you see I'm screaming, "I'm his father, I'm his father."
05:17 [yelling]
05:19 Well, I meant it.
05:22 And Ben meant it.
05:25 So these things that happen to people
05:27 that have drinking problems, it's powerful.
05:31 I think the good news is I got a lot of great response
05:34 from folks who were recovered.
05:36 Some people said, "Wow, the movie really made me
05:38 "want to drink," or other people said,
05:39 "Well, the movie made me never want to drink again,
05:41 "but thank you, Nick, that was really what it's like."
05:44 And I think that that was me taking a high-risk experiment
05:47 in film performance, but I am happy with the results.
05:51 It's sad and hard to watch as it may be.
05:55 [upbeat music]
05:58 - When a long train of abuses and usurpations
06:06 pursuing invariably the same object,
06:08 events as it designed to reduce them
06:10 under absolute despotism.
06:12 It is their right, it is their duty
06:14 to throw off such government.
06:16 People don't talk that way anymore.
06:19 - Beautiful, huh?
06:20 No idea what you said.
06:23 - Well, how do you take something
06:26 that is so profoundly ridiculous
06:28 and really try to sell it, okay?
06:30 What I like about that scene, just seeing it again
06:33 for the first time in I don't know how many years,
06:35 is I like the positivity of the character.
06:37 He really believes this, he really reveres it.
06:40 And I think that that's charming.
06:43 - I'm gonna steal it.
06:44 - What?
06:50 - I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.
06:53 - I can't even say it without laughing.
06:56 I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence
06:57 because it has been memed so many times.
07:00 It has been SNL'd, you know?
07:03 But you can't help but laugh.
07:05 I mean, okay, but I think what really makes it work
07:09 is how serious Justin and I are taking it.
07:11 If you played it for laughs,
07:13 then it's screwball comedy and it's stupid
07:16 and it's not my thing, it's not where I'm at.
07:18 But the fact that we played it like dramatic actors
07:21 makes it even more funny than it might've been
07:23 if it was slapstick.
07:24 I think John Turtletaub shot it lovingly.
07:27 I mean, he really made the characters look
07:30 like they had great reverence and regard,
07:33 almost like it was a sacred,
07:34 well, to some it is sacred,
07:36 but almost like a holy object.
07:39 And then to punch it with, "I'm gonna steal it,"
07:42 it's so ridiculous, you just can't help but love it.
07:46 That's nice to see that scene again.
07:47 Thanks, John Turtletaub.
07:49 What else have we got?
07:50 - Obviously, we have to change strategies here
07:59 to adapt to the current situation.
08:00 - Is Obama still a thing?
08:02 That might be helpful now, right?
08:04 - What?
08:05 - Obama.
08:06 You said you guys were talking to Obama, right?
08:08 - Oh, Obama's not an option anymore.
08:12 Yeah, but we are getting positive signals
08:13 from a different venue, the whole,
08:16 I don't wanna say all right,
08:17 but the kind of anti-establishment space.
08:19 - None of the scenes in the movie
08:21 were actually played for laughs, for laughs sake.
08:24 It was all approached with a sense of almost like a drama.
08:28 You know, don't go for laughs,
08:29 but the humor will come out of the ridiculousness
08:32 of the situation organically.
08:33 You know, we'd rehearse that scene a lot,
08:36 Christopher and I and the other actors.
08:38 This is a character, Paul Matthews,
08:41 does not wanna be a movie star,
08:43 does not wanna be a rock star.
08:44 He's an evolutionary biologist.
08:46 He wants to get his book about ants published,
08:48 but at this point, the fame has turned.
08:52 - The kind of anti-establishment space,
08:54 you know, kind of the Jordan Peterson route?
08:56 - Yeah, we can maybe get you on "Rogan" or something,
08:59 share your experience of being canceled
09:02 and just like give it that combo to the play it for us.
09:05 - Guys, no, I hate that idea.
09:08 - You know, in my own life, for example,
09:10 I, maybe 2008, 2009, I went online, stupidly,
09:14 and I Googled my name.
09:15 Up came this video,
09:16 "Nicholas Cage Loses His Crap" or whatever,
09:18 and it started going viral
09:20 and it started compounding on itself exponentially.
09:23 And suddenly I was a meme on T-shirts, "You Don't Save."
09:28 And what had happened in that video
09:29 is he was cherry picking different meltdowns
09:32 that I had with no sense of act one or act two
09:36 or how the character got there.
09:37 There was nothing I could do to stop it,
09:39 nothing I could do to control it.
09:40 So I put all those emotions
09:42 into this character of Paul Matthews.
09:45 He doesn't look like me, he doesn't move like me,
09:47 he doesn't talk like me,
09:49 but those genuine feelings of frustration
09:54 are in that character in that moment in that scene.
09:57 I don't wanna be some culture war person.
10:00 I don't wanna be controversial.
10:04 - Okay, well, yeah, this is gonna go right
10:07 against what you're saying right now,
10:08 but there is a chance, we think,
10:10 to get you on Tucker Carlson this week.
10:12 - Tucker.
10:13 - So that's a big audience, just think about that.
10:15 (upbeat music)
10:19 (upbeat music)
10:22 - Are you okay?
10:31 - I had already shot the cast of Troy scenes
10:37 at the beginning with the head banging
10:40 and the clapping and the priest's uniform,
10:44 but imagine waking up and you're wearing the face
10:48 of the man that murdered your child.
10:50 I don't know why, I get some ideas
10:52 from the strangest places and they come to me
10:55 almost like a memory Rolodex of cinema.
10:59 I watch a lot of movies.
11:01 One comes from an actual performance,
11:03 Christopher Walken in "The Dead Zone".
11:05 He did something so poetic in that movie.
11:07 He's very emotional and it's such a poetic move.
11:11 That's my favorite Walken performance,
11:12 but he, I remember he just turned
11:14 and he did that with his hand
11:16 because he couldn't really articulate.
11:18 And that always stayed with me.
11:19 (sobbing)
11:23 (screaming)
11:25 - Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
11:30 - And then the other story is Dennis Hopper once said that,
11:37 and they were doing "Rebel Without a Cause".
11:40 I think it was Nicholas Ray said,
11:44 "Well, you're gonna meet an actor
11:45 and he's a little different and he may shock you.
11:49 He may unnerve you, but they were gonna do a read-through
11:52 for the movie, but on screen, he's gonna be pure gold."
11:55 And they opened the door
11:57 and there was James Dean at the table
12:00 and he looked at everybody and he just went,
12:02 fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
12:05 And that always stayed with me.
12:06 And I thought, okay, just came to my head.
12:09 I'm gonna play that scene,
12:11 but it's gonna be Sean Archer with Caster's Troy's face.
12:15 That's how that happened.
12:17 It really happens as mercurially as that
12:20 where it just ideas come to me for design, for performance.
12:24 - You're Sean Archer.
12:26 Sean Archer, Sean Archer.
12:29 When this is over, I want you to take this face
12:41 and burn it.
12:43 - I was only Caster for the first 10 minutes.
12:46 People will always remember me as Caster
12:47 even though I was Sean for two hours
12:50 because I wrote the blueprint, I designed it.
12:52 - Put the bunny back in the box.
13:01 - I knew you was a punk and I was right.
13:08 You were playing us all along.
13:10 You were free man.
13:12 I said, put the bunny back in the box.
13:18 - Okay, well, all right.
13:21 Well, first of all, I wrote that line,
13:23 put the bunny back in the box.
13:24 Why?
13:25 Okay, so you see these adventure films
13:27 with these big stars like Eastwood, Make My Day.
13:29 And I thought, how can I take that tradition,
13:34 make the Make My Day so ridiculous?
13:38 What can I come up with that will become my Make My Day?
13:41 Bunnies are kind of funny.
13:43 I'm bringing a bunny to my daughter.
13:45 That was another idea I put in.
13:46 And that's why I had the bunny
13:48 'cause I wanted to say that line,
13:50 put the bunny back in the box.
13:51 It's absurdity at its finest.
13:54 But again, if you sell it with genuine emotion
13:59 and real determination,
14:01 like this is the most serious thing in the world.
14:02 And it is because he has to give it to his daughter
14:05 who he hasn't seen in six years.
14:06 It's serious, he means it, but it's ridiculous.
14:09 And that's what I love about it.
14:11 I said, put the bunny back in the box.
14:16 I went to Anniston, Alabama and we go to the Waffle House
14:27 and I would sit there and I would just listen to people.
14:30 And then I would meet folks and they invite me for beers
14:33 at the Motel Six.
14:34 And I would just ask them questions
14:36 and listen to their sound and their accent
14:38 'cause I had made the decision
14:39 that I did want him to be from Alabama.
14:41 And I also made the decision that I wanted him
14:44 to have a kind of larger than life physicality,
14:48 which was also nothing like me.
14:50 So those two things were where I dove into
14:53 in terms of the character,
14:55 the external character development,
14:57 not so much the emotional character development.
15:00 [dramatic music]
15:03 I was probably in the best shape of my life at that time.
15:15 I don't know how many pushups and sit-ups
15:18 I was doing a day to become this character
15:20 who I'm nothing like.
15:21 And I was really game for any kind of physicality.
15:24 I was really light on my feet
15:25 and I enjoyed all the stunt rehearsals
15:28 and it was so much ridiculous testosterone on that set.
15:31 You wouldn't believe it.
15:32 Everyone was trying to do sprint contests,
15:35 pull-up contests.
15:36 I won, I could never do it again.
15:38 [dramatic music]
15:41 - Die, punk.
15:43 - Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?
15:52 - I was really up for it.
15:54 I loved it.
15:54 I enjoyed being fit.
15:56 I enjoyed doing the stunt fighting.
15:59 And the fact that it was such a contained space
16:02 only made it more exciting
16:03 because it was about inches.
16:05 Like what can we get away with here and there
16:07 and still have it look in some way kind of spectacular.
16:10 Thank you for watching me watch back my scenes.
16:17 Me watch back my scenes.
16:19 Watch back my scenes.
16:20 Thank you for watching me watch back my scenes.
16:22 Thank you.
16:23 (upbeat music)