Nicolas Cage Apocalypse
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Nicolas Cage's first-time director apocalypse, Game of Thrones body problems, Pixar's sarcasm chasm, Thomas Vinterberg's takes on fantasy, and a PowerPoint presentation.
Let’s go!
NICOLAS CAGE APOCALYPSE
In 2008, Nicolas Cage made a mistake.
He googled his own name and watched the viral YouTube supercut “Nicolas Cage losing his shit.”
He was shattered:
“Somebody had cherry-picked all these freakout scenes and cobbled them together without any regard for how the character got to that level of crisis. And then it started going viral, exponentially growing, and became memes.”
Although Cage has always brought a certain level of authenticity to his work, see:
Raising Arizona (1987)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Academy Award for Best Actor
Adaptation (2002)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Cage has also always been an easy target.
At age 18, on the set of his first feature, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), he found himself mocked because his uncle was Francis Ford Coppola. Rather than be followed by a shadow of nepotism, he shed his birth name, Nicolas Coppola.
Cage has navigated his own newfound stardom in the last few years by intentionally rejecting traditional Hollywood films and anchoring himself to the authenticity of the next generation of directors:
"I always knew that it would take a young filmmaker who would have grown up with me in some way saying, “I want to try this,” and I have the humility to say, “You’re half my age and you’re twice as intelligent, I’m going to give you the controls.”
In his latest, Cage stars in Benjamin Brewer’s directorial debut, Arcadian. Cage plays the father of two twin boys who fight for survival at the end of the world.
From meme apocalypse to fresh directorial visions of the apocalypse, Cage's journey is a beacon of resilience.
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