Nicolas Cage Rewatches National Treasure, Moonstruck, Dream Scenario & More

I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.

I can't even say it without laughing,

I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence,

because it has been memed so many times.

But you can't help but laugh.

Hi, I'm Nicolas Cage and I'm gonna rewatch some scenes

throughout my filmography.

I haven't seen these scenes in a very long time,

so whatever happens to me, it'll be in real time.

Here goes, boom.

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He ordered bread for me and I said oh okay,

some bread. [laughs]

And I put my hand in the slicer and it got caught.

It's funny 'cause when my fiance found out about it,

when she found out that I had been maimed,

she left me for another man.

Wow.

Couple things come to mind.

Brooklyn accent, I worked on that quite a bit

'cause originally, I was talking with like

a Jean Marais in Beauty and the Beast, but he was in French,

but I was trying to give it that growl,

but I dialed that back 'cause I wanted to keep my job.

But that's not Johnny's fault.

[bucket clattering]

I don't care!

I ain't no freaking monument to justice!

It was shocking, that ugh, when the anger hit.

I remember Norman Jewison said well,

you can get really hot really fast on camera.

I lost my hand!

I lost my bride!

That moment where I'm going I lost my hand,

I lost my bride!

Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his bride,

that was a designed, rather choreographed move

that I got from an old Fritz Lang movie called Metropolis,

where the mad scientist takes off the glove

and shows his robot hand.

So that was a direct steal.

I was very impressionable when I first saw

Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

That moment with the scientist made a real impact on me,

and it's designed, it's choreographed,

and that's what German expressionism was, in my view,

was like almost choreographed acting.

I try to put in that, the moment of looking up at the hand

and seeing it was a very grandiose gesture,

but it worked.

Johnny has his hand!

Johnny has his bride!

You want me to take my heartbreak, put it away and forget?

Oh, the tooth is missing. [laughs]

So what happened there is I had baby teeth.

I had done a picture called Birdy,

and I decided to pull my baby teeth out

for that character, Al Columbado,

but then they hadn't grown in yet,

so when I did Moonstruck, you still see a gaping hole.

Is it just a matter of time?

Before a man opens his eyes and gives up his one dream?

My feeling was you can do anything,

you can get as big as you want,

you can get as expressionistic as you want,

as long as it's informed with genuine emotion.

All right, let's see what's next.

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No, no!

[glass clinking] Fuck you, fuck!

You fuckin' [screams].

[table clanking]

Uh [sighs], it's hard to watch.

I'd seen Albert Finney in Under the Volcano.

I asked Mike Figgus, who directed him in another picture,

did Albert drink while he was working?

Albert Finney is a huge inspiration to me, and he said no,

but tell Nick I would taste it and I'd spit it out.

I'd seen several movies with great alcoholic performances.

The only one where I really said that guy's really drunk

was Albert Finney walking through the streets of Mexico

at the beginning of Under the Volcano.

So I'd made a decision that at some point in the movie,

I want to see if I can get a real blackout on camera.

Dangerous, crazy, I would never do it again.

I don't act with alcohol or anything, I act dry.

And we only had four weeks to shoot the movie.

If it had gone on for six months,

it would've been a disaster,

but I wanted to take that scene and really get loaded.

I was not loaded through the rest of the picture.

I would have a drink here or there

just to get a sense of like the Albert Finney,

spit it out, get a vibe.

Had a drinking coach named Tony Dingman,

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 went downstairs

and I was like whatever happens, get it,

because this isn't gonna happen again.

[screams] God fuck!

[indistinct]

I am his father!

I had developed a sense of backstory for Ben,

which is that he had gone through a divorce,

was trying to get custody of his son,

and in my own life, I was really trying to get that one day

out of the week to see my kid at the time,

and it was something that I knew was in the body,

and I knew it was in the character for Ben.

So when I went downstairs and we shot the scene,

that's the result.

And you see I'm screaming I'm his father, I'm his father.

I am his father!

Well, I meant it. [laughs]

And Ben meant it.

So these things that happened to people

that have drinking problems, it's powerful.

I think the good news is I got a lot of great response

from folks who were recovered.

Some people said wow,

the movie really made me want to drink,

or other people said well,

the movie made me never want to drink again,

but thank you Nick, that was really what it's like,

and I think that that was me taking a high risk experiment

in film performance, but I am happy with the results,

as sad and hard to watch as it may be.

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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations

pursuing invariably the same object,

events is designed to reduce them under absolute despotism

and is their right, it is their duty,

to throw off such government.

People don't talk that way anymore.

Beautiful, huh?

No idea what you said.

Well [laughs], how do you take something

that is so profoundly ridiculous

and really try to sell it, okay?

What I like about that scene, just seeing it again

for the first time in I don't know how many years,

is I like the positivity of the character.

He really believes this, he really reveres it,

and I think that that's charming.

I'm gonna steal it.

[laughs]

What?

I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.

I can't even say it without laughing.

I'm gonna steal the Declaration of Independence,

because it has been memed so many times,

it has been SNL'd, you know? [laughs]

But you can't help but laugh.

I mean okay, but I think what really makes it work

is how serious Justin and I are taking it.

If you played it for laughs then it's screwball comedy

and it's stupid and it's not my thing,

it's not where I'm at, but the fact that we played it

like dramatic actors makes it even more funny

than it might've been if it was slapstick.

I think Jon Turteltaub shot it lovingly.

He really made the characters look like

they had great reverence and regard,

almost like it was a sacred, well, to some it is sacred,

but almost like a holy object,

and then to punch it with I'm gonna steal it [laughs],

it's so ridiculous, you just can't help but love it.

It's nice to see that scene again.

Thanks Jon Turteltaub.

What else have we got?

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[Phone] Obviously we have to change strategies here

to adapt to the current situation.

Is Obama still a thing?

That might be helpful now, right?

[Phone] What?

Obama, you said you guys were talking to Obama, right?

[Phone] Oh, Obama's not an option anymore.

Yeah, but we are getting positive signals

from a different venue.

The whole, I don't wanna say alt right,

but the kind of anti-establishment space.

None of the scenes in the movie

were actually played for laughs, for laughs sake,

it was all approached with a sense of almost like a drama,

don't go for laughs, but the humor will come out

of the ridiculousness of the situation organically.

We had rehearsed that scene a lot, Christopher and I

and the other actors.

This is a character,

Paul Matthews does not want to be a movie star,

does not want to be a rock star,

he's an evolutionary biologist.

He wants to get his book about ants published,

but at this point, the fame has turned.

[Phone] The kind of anti-establishment space, you know?

Kind of the Jordan Peterson route.

[Phone 2] Yeah, we could maybe get you on Rogan

or something and share your experience of being canceled

and just like pivot that convo to the plant book-

Guys, no, I hate that idea.

In my own life, for example, maybe 2008-2009,

I went online stupidly and I googled my name,

up came this video Nicholas Cage loses his crap or whatever,

and it started going viral

and it started compounding on itself exponentially,

and suddenly I was a meme.

A T-shirt said you don't say?

And what had happened in that video

was he was cherry picking different meltdowns that I had

with no sense of act one or act two

or how the character got there.

There was nothing I could do to stop it,

nothing I could do to control it.

So I put all those emotions into this character

of Paul Matthews.

He doesn't look like me, he doesn't move like me,

he doesn't talk like me,

but those genuine feelings of frustration

are in that character in that moment, in that scene.

I don't wanna be some culture war person,

I don't wanna be controversial.

[Phone] Okay, well yeah, this is gonna go right

against what you're saying right now,

but there is a chance we think to get you on Tucker Carlson

this week, so that's a big audience, just think about that.

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[Guard] Are you okay?

[Sean whimpering]

I had already shot the Castor Troy scenes

at the beginning with the headbanging and the clapping

and the priest's uniform, but imagine waking up

and you're wearing the face of the man

that murdered your child.

I don't know why, I get some ideas from the strangest places

and they come to me almost like a memory Rolodex of cinema.

I watch a lot of movies.

One comes from an actual performance,

Christopher Walken in the Dead Zone.

He did something so poetic in that movie,

he's very emotional and it's such a poetic move,

that's my favorite Walken performance,

but remember he just turned and he did that with his hand

because he couldn't really articulate,

and that always stayed with me.

[Sean whimpering]

[Sean screaming]

[mirror clanking]

[mirror smashing]

Fuck you!

Fuck you!

Fuck you!

Sean!

Fuck you! Sean!

And then the other story is Dennis Hopper once said that,

when they were doing Rebel Without a Cause,

I think it was Nicholas Ray said well,

you're gonna meet an actor and he's a little different

and he may shock you, he may unnerve you,

but they were gonna do a read through for the movie,

but on screen he's gonna be pure gold.

And they opened the door

and there was James Dean at the table

and he looked at everybody and he just went fuck you,

fuck you, fuck you, and that always stayed with me,

and I thought okay, just came to my head,

I'm going to play that scene but it's gonna be Sean Archer

with Castor Troy's face.

That's how that happened.

It really happens as mercurially as that,

where ideas come to me for design for performance.

You're Sean Archer!

[needle whooshing]

Sean Archer, Sean Archer.

When this is over,

I want you to take this face and burn it.

I was only Caster for the first 10 minutes.

People will always remember me as Caster,

even though I was Sean for two hours

because I wrote the blueprint, I designed it. [laughs]

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Put the bunny back in the box.

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I knew you was a punk and I was right.

You've been playing us all along, you a free man.

[paper crinkling]

I said put the bunny back in the box.

Okay well, all right, well first of all, I wrote that line,

put the bunny back in the box.

Why?

Okay, so you see these adventure films

with these big stars like Eastwood, make my day,

and I thought how can I take that tradition,

make the make my day so ridiculous?

What can I come up with that will become my make my day?

Bunnies are kind of funny.

Well, I'm bringing a bunny to my daughter,

that was another idea I put in,

and that's why I had the bunny

'cause I wanted to say that line,

put the bunny back in the box.

It's absurdity at its finest but again,

if you sell it with genuine [laughs] emotion

and real determination,

like this is the most serious thing in the world,

and it is because he has to give it to his daughter

who he hasn't seen in six years.

It's serious, he means it, but it's ridiculous,

and that's what I love about it.

I said, put the bunny back in the box.

[guard laughing]

I went to Aniston, Alabama

and I would go to the Waffle House and I would sit there

and I would just listen to people,

and then I would meet folks

and they'd invite me for beers at the Motel 6,

and I would just ask them questions

and listen to their sound and their accent,

'cause I had made the decision

that I did want him to be from Alabama,

and I also made the decision that I wanted him

to have a kind of larger than life physicality,

which was also nothing like me.

So those two things were what I dove into

in terms of the character,

the external character development,

not so much the emotional character development.

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I was probably in the best shape of my life at that time.

I don't know how many pushups and sit-ups

I was doing a day to become this character

who I'm nothing like,

and I was really game for any kind of physicality.

I was really light on my feet

and I enjoyed all the stunt rehearsals,

and it was so much ridiculous testosterone on that set,

you wouldn't believe it.

Everyone was trying to do sprint contests, pull up contests.

I won, I could never do it again.

[pipe clanging] [dramatic music]

[Guard] Die, punk!

[arm cracking]

[guard groaning]

Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?

I was really up for it, I loved it, I enjoyed being fit,

I enjoyed doing the stunt fighting,

and the fact that it was such a contained space

only made it more exciting because it was about inches.

Like what can we get away with here and there

and still have it look in some way kind of spectacular?

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Thank you for watching me watch back my scenes.

Me watch back my scenes, watch back my scenes.

Thank you for watching me watch back my scenes.

Thank you.