The 16-second cameo that captures the essence of Nicolas Cage: “They cut that out”
Ethan Hawke might have been on to something when he suggested that Nicolas Cage was the first actor since Marlon Brando to bring anything new, daring, inventive, or exciting to the art of acting.
Of course, the biggest difference between cinema’s most monumental method man and the pioneer of Nouveau Shamanism is that there’s hardly been an influx of actors seeking to emulate the latter’s style. Why? Most likely, it was because nobody else would have a clue about where the hell they were supposed to start.
Multiple generations of thespians have looked to Brando’s naturalistic and immersive techniques as the blueprint, but there’s only one Nic Cage. He’s developed his own distinct and inimitable style that draws from a myriad of eclectic influences to turn him from the latest member of the Coppola dynasty into a one-man meme generator and one of Hollywood’s most famously eccentric oddballs.
The Academy Award winner has been doing crazy shit onscreen for the last four decades, but nothing encapsulates the essence of Cage better than Adam Rifkin’s 1988 comedy Never on Tuesday. On the surface, the actor making a cameo that extends to barely 20 seconds of screen time shouldn’t be enough to reflect an entire body of work, but that’s Cage in a nutshell.
His entire contribution to the film, which was released direct-to-video and didn’t list him in the credits, is minimal. A red sports car drives down a highway, Cage gets out, he laughs maniacally, and then he gets back in the motor and fucks off, job done. And yet, it’s utterly bonkers, and it all came from him.
Cage has never looked lankier, his hair has never been floppier, and to top it all off, he wears a massive prosthetic nose and speaks in a ludicrous, high-pitched and nasal accent. Why? Because he wanted to, and nobody decided to stop him from going down the rabbit hole for a guest spot. Remarkably, he had even more up his sleeve, only for cooler heads to prevail.
“I started screaming, ‘Pinocchio! Pinocchio!’ but they cut that out,” he admitted to Vulture. “That’s the whole character, all in 16 seconds. That, to me, is interesting. I wasn’t gonna be some guy in a swanky jacket with gold medallions: ‘Hey baby, get in my car’. How many times have we seen that?”
Plenty, but how many times have audiences seen a famous actor sporting a gigantic schnozz flailing his arms around and adopting a bizarre accent for a role that required him to get in and out of a car and speak a couple of lines? The answer is once. How many people would even consider such a thing? The answer is one, and it’s Nicolas Cage.
Most people wouldn’t even think about putting so much effort into the most minor part, but that’s never been his deal. Instead, he made it as Cagey as humanly possible, which has been his mantra from day one.
