The Oscar-winning movie Nicolas Cage made because nobody else wanted to: “No studio would touch it”
A proverb thrown around a lot is that the best things will come to you when you’re not looking for them. People who subscribe to this theory will argue that purposely seeking something – whether it’s a dream career or true love – is the quickest way to ensure you won’t find it, but if you just remain patient and open, it will find you. Nicolas Cage certainly believes in it, though.
After all, he once admitted that he never thought he would win an Oscar. However, as soon as he stopped worrying about that and made the dangerous movie that no other actor was brave enough to tackle, that fabled golden statue found him.
When first-time movie producer Stuart Regan found a novel entitled Leaving Las Vegas in a secondhand bookshop, he was stunned by its unflinching depiction of alcoholism. He contacted the author John O’Brien, a struggling writer who wrote the semi-autobiographical tale in 1990 and optioned the rights to the book. O’Brien, who has been on a downward spiral thanks to his addiction to alcohol for years, was wary that Hollywood would try and turn his story into an uplifting tale of triumph over adversity. To his credit, Regan assured him that wouldn’t be the case.
The story, which was inspired by events in O’Brien’s real life, followed Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic screenwriter who decides to move to Las Vegas to drink himself to death after losing his family and job. In ‘Sin City’, he strikes up a relationship with a prostitute, and a slight glimmer of hope begins to appear for both of them. However, she can’t save him with her love, and he succeeds in killing himself with alcohol.
This was obviously extremely dark, harrowing material. It was made even darker, though, by the fact that O’Brien committed suicide only weeks after his book was optioned. The last time his father saw his son, he was in hospital, having drunkenly driven his car into a telephone pole. When he was released, he went on a binge and took his own life, but not before ensuring his family received the entire six-figure cheque he was paid for the film adaptation of his novel.
When Cage read the Leaving Las Vegas script, he was struck by its bleakness and moved by O’Brien’s tragic story. He told Entertainment Weekly, “He was going down this river and didn’t bother grabbing for branches or rocks to stay afloat.” Director Mike Figgis added, “I don’t think that money and the rest of it mattered. He was too far gone.”
The harrowing script, coupled with everything surrounding the film, made it a tough sell in Hollywood. In fact, Cage told NPR in 2023, “I did Leaving Las Vegas because nobody else wanted to do it. It was the darkest script in town. No studio would touch it, and they were all afraid of it because of the material.” Cage even feared that signing up for the role could derail his career – but then he realised there was no sense in basing his choices on the potential for something happening that he has no control over. He admitted, “I thought, ‘Well, heck, I’m not going to win an Oscar anyway for anything, so let’s do it,’ you know?”
To research the role, Cage did something that sounds incredibly foolish – a “method” process that would definitely not fly in 2024. He travelled to Dublin, binge-drank Guinness for two weeks, and made his friend film him in drunken states. That way, he could study the footage and recreate his boozy demeanour on set. He felt that he could only do this by going somewhere far away, admitting, “That’s the beauty of staying in a hotel; you can drink and drink until you fall over, and no one need see you.”
While shooting the film, Cage revealed he would swirl alcohol around his mouth so he got the taste of it. However, he would spit it out before the cameras rolled. This approach worked for 99% of the film, but he admitted to Vanity Fair that he was actually inebriated for the scene in which Sanderson has a complete drunken breakdown.
The star confessed, “I had a drinking coach named Tony Dingman, a family friend, at the time a drunk, a poet. We were drinking Sambuca, and he thought that would be a good choice for this scene. So I was drinking the Sambuca, and I was like, ‘Whatever happens, get it because this isn’t gonna happen again.'”
While Cage’s method approach may seem unnecessary today, it did have the desired effect. His performance in Leaving Las Vegas is widely seen as one of the most realistic depictions of alcohol dependency in screen history. It led to him winning the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar in 1996 – something he would never have achieved if he’d been trying to engineer it.
