...driving home from the movies:
Gunsmith Bob: "That sure was a great movie. The Coen brothers just keep getting better and better. It's hard to believe this movie was made by the same guys who made Raising Arizona."
Me: "Hey, I liked Raising Arizona!"
GB: "Oh, but it had the guy in it. With the awful. And the bad actor."
Me: "Nicolas Cage?"
GB: "Yeah. He couldn't act like he was on fire if you doused him in gasoline and threw him a match."
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Back about a million years and 50 lbs ago, I was a rookie cop, working off-duty security at a backwater rennaissance fair. The mead flowed like, er, honey wine, and the girls wore deeeeeply cut blouses and drank it from leather cups.
Me, I wore a Colt Mark IV in a JPG-made belt slide, with a blue polo saying I was the fuzz, and a pair of black BDUs, with a pair of 60's vintage cuffs stuck in the small of my back. So much for classic garb.
A drunk wench came sidling up to me and breathed an intoxicated breath into my face as she gushed, "You know who yew look lahk? Yew look jesh like that guy. Wash hish name? Cage. Nicolash Cage."
Another, younger girl of questionable drinking age but wih no visible cup said, "No, because if he looked like Nicolas Cage, I'd wanna F**K the hell outa him. Hey! Cop boy! Look over here! No, look. Over here! OhMyGawd! When you look at him, he does look like Nicolas Cage! Hey, Cop. You know what...?"
I said, "Gotta go." and left. Quickly.
Only time in my life I've ever been on receiving end of the beer goggle effect. That ring on my fourth left was still awefully new and shiny (two years old), and it didn't need any tarnish.
But now I think of that tawdry, sloppy, almost-come-on at that second-rate Renaissance fair, whenever I think of any movie with Cage in it.
Shit, if we're going to bag on Cage, let's make fun of the crappy southern accent he keeps putting on.
For about 20 years now the first thing that comes to mind when I see something with Nicholas Cage in it is 'I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash you got in the register.' Doesn't matter how serious the role, at some point in the show that's the phrase that will pop into my head.
Not the bees. No, never the bees.
I loved Raising Arizona and I have to say, Nicolas Cage's wooden acting really worked in that movie. It made the character perfectly.
ConAir.
Loved it.
Moonstruck.
Loved it.
City of Angels.
Loved it.
Ghost Rider.
Loved it.
Whateverthehell that Vegas movie was, where he jumped out of the plane in an Elvis suit.
Loved it.
That was "Honeymoon in Vegas".
Not to be confused with "Leaving Las Vegas".
Ghostrider? To be fair, I couldn't get past his really bad hair transplants. But the script was fair and the acting poor.
Though I did love Peter Fonda as the Devil.
Oh, and I actually did love Raising Arizona.
And what about: "I found myself drivin' by convenience stores that weren't on the way home."
Or: "But what else could I do? With that sumbitch Reagan in the White House."
And also: "You mean to tell me you boys broke out of prison?"
"No, ma'am, no, we released ourselves on our own recognizance."
I like Cage. Mostly because he almost always has that look on his face, that says "What the hell is going on here and how did I get involved in it?"
He's Everyman. Who gets dragooned into breaking IN to Alcatraz with a sixty years old SAS guy, or enlisted by Satan to harvest souls, or stuck between J.T. Walsh and Lara Flynn Boyle and Dennis Hopper as they all try to murder and rob each other (my favorite Cage film despite the stupid bit at the end with the semi-auto with the magazine out but one round chambered that doesn't fire).
In fact, I think the only film he's done without The Look was Kiss of Death. Which maybe says something bad about his character.
Back in the early 80's, I remember renting Raising Arizona. We only kept watching it because we just knew it had to get better. When it ended, we agreed that not only did we waste a perfectly good dollar bill (that was the going rate for video rentals back then), but we lost all that time out of our lives that we would never get back.
Fast forward to the late 80's and a bunch of us at work are sitting around discussing weighty issues and someone asks for our selections for either best or worst movie. Someone says Raising Arizona. Simultaneously everyone says "That was the best/worst movie I ever saw". It was about a perfect 50/50 split on whether someone loved it or hated it, with no real middle of the road opinions.
gungeek, that reminds me that there are two statements, either of which is guaranteed to start a fight at any science fiction convention:
"The David Lynch Dune totally sucked ass!"
"The David Lynch Dune is one of the best SF films ever!"
Tell you what, if you want to take up a collection for acting lessons for him, I'm sure I could chip in a gallon or two. Jim
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