Nicolas Cage picks his favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie
Although his career began long before the disdainful trope “nepo baby” reared its head, a fair argument could be made that Nicolas Cage enjoyed a leg up in his early rise to success. This stems from the fact that he’s the nephew of the legendary New Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola. However, it must be noted that Coppola politely declined when Cage asked for a role in 1990’s The Godfather Part III.
Despite being born into a position of opportunity, Cage had to work hard for his acting career to take off in the 1980s. Since then, he has masterfully portrayed an impressive spectrum of characters, securing a deserved position among the most acclaimed actors of his era. Whether taking on satirical comedy roles or serious dramas, Cage never fails to bring due intensity to the screen.
In the mid-1980s, following formative appearances in the teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish, Nicolas Kim Coppola employed the stage name Nicolas Cage. Although relations never turned stale between Cage and his famous uncle, he chose to drop the Coppola name in hopes he could focus on a career removed from family connections.
In a 2022 conversation with Wired, Cage revealed that, while on set filming Fast Times at Ridgemont High, “people would not stop saying things like, ‘I love the smell of Nicolas in the morning,'” in reference to the classic Apocalypse Now quote, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Cage explained that this mocking “made it hard to work, and I said, ‘I don’t need this,’ and changed it to Cage.”
Cage hasn’t appeared in a Francis Ford Coppola movie since 1984’s The Cotton Club but remains an avid fan of his uncle’s towering catalogue. In 2018, Rotten Tomatoes asked Cage to name his 13 favourite movies of all time. Among the choices was Coppola’s landmark Vietnam War movie of 1979, Apocalypse Now.
“I saw Apocalypse Now really with everybody else; so Marlon Brando was there, and my uncle was showing the movie, and Dennis Hopper was there and [Marc Marrie], and…I don’t think Marrie was there, but everybody… Let’s see. Larry was there,” Cage commented on his choice. “They were watching the movie for the first time, and I must’ve been about, gosh, what was I? 12, 13? I don’t know, but it really put a big effect in me, and I was blown away by the scope of the film.
“I don’t think there really was a movie like that before with the helicopter sequences, and with Brando’s performance with Dennis Hopper was,” he adds. “I mean, he was really going off the rails in that, and that had a big impact on me as well, in terms of my own later choices with film performance. I wanted to get a little more Dennis Hopper or less Dennis Hopper with some of the stuff that I was doing, so that had a big impact.”
Watch the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now below.
