Massive, Massive Talent

        Prior to the past two days, I never could have called myself a Nic Cage fan. I respect legends, and I love National Treasure and really enjoyed Adaptation, but my enjoyment of the average Nic Cage movie is unpredictable. In some ways, my mixed reactions to Cage’s performances mirror the unpredictability of how Cage’s movies will be received by the rest of the public. Cage is weird. Not all of his performances work for me. But my perception of his ability to craft characters was transformed after seeing his movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

  

     In the movie, Cage plays himself as he navigates a complicated kidnapping plot and tries to define himself. The movie is weird as hell but is worth a watch, because it offers real insight into an actor who struggles to define himself in a world that has mythologized and (potentially) misrepresented him. Cage seems oddly conscious of his status as both an acting legend and a complete meme, but seems to care very little about either of these labels. To me, this is the heart of his creative process; he is incredibly open to doing whatever it takes to improving his performances in his own eyes, regardless of how other people view them. 

That is not to say that Cage is wholly intrinsically motivated. In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, Cage noted that he is inspired by his love of acting and working, but that there have also been times when he has taken roles simply to get a paycheck. It was also noteworthy how much Cage referenced other actors and other movies in his interview. It is clear that he is inspired by his peers, but the extent to which he discusses them seems indicative of the “collecting” creative process. Cage goes as far as to reference a time when he was so inspired by a commercial that John Stamos did that he emulated Stamos’ speaking inflections in one of his movies. Cage also clearly uses analogies as a means of sorting out where he stands in the film industry. When discussing why he stopped being an avid reader of philosophy, Cage states, “I thought people would rather see me as an orangutan than as an eagle meditating on the mountaintop anyway.” 

Again, Cage’s acting style is bizarre and I have absolutely no idea why he makes some of the acting choices that he does. But, as Cage points out in the interview, people with massive talent often aren’t understood in the public sphere. Cage’s talent comes from his ability to drop all conceptions about how he is perceived by others and channel his style in a unique way. I’m genuinely excited to see where his career will go next.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/07/magazine/nicolas-cage-interview.html