You Can't Judge Me: Leaving Las Vegas

You know from the very first frame of Leaving Las Vegas that Ben Sanderson regards himself as a dead man, and will spend the rest of the film attempting to encompass that identity. The first fifteen minutes serve as an introduction to Ben's severe alcoholism, so where they fall chronologically in terms of his progressive sickness is a little hazy, but I suspect that this first scene takes place either during the immediate fallout of his never-fully-explained marital/familial tragedy, or right after he has been fired and cut off from all of his friends--in either case different stages of the mentality that has decided to completely free him of such concerns. He's aware that he's being watched as he dumps an endless supply of liquor into his shopping cart, whistling some unknown tune as he jives down the aisle and makes just the right selections to sate his thirst. He passes by the shelves of bottled water in an almost sarcastic manner, taking a step past the booze before spinning back around to pick up one last bottle. Nicolas Cage's performance as Ben is one of gradual, entropic deconstruction, establishing a man entirely on his own wavelength and spending the rest of the film taking him apart, piece by piece, until nothing recognizable remains.As Roger Ebert points out in his Great Movies essay on Leaving Las Vegas, Ben's drinking binges "are not about pleasure but about the temporary release from pain," but Cage transcends even that simple truth. He carefully studies Ben's various states of drunkenness in these early scenes, each of which represent a different level of a long and torturous journey to foster some understanding for who he is as the world collapses around him. The pain to be found in his brief stretches of sobriety is palpable--sweaty and fidgety, his hands desperate to grab onto something steady, his eyes either tightly shut or wide open, darting back and forth with suspicion--but it's the moments of booze-induced levity that are the most difficult to watch in this first act of the film. In contemporary interviews, Cage mentions that he watched several "great alcoholic performances" but connected most with Albert Finney's role as a drunken British consul in Under the Volcano. That makes sense: in The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland personifies an alcoholic's desperation to make the pain go away, but Ben/Cage's early moments share with Finney's Geoffrey Firmin a long-standing belief that alcohol is fuel for the personality--the concept of "liquid courage" taken in its most literal sense.

With this in mind, the physical dependence seems like only a side-effect of the psychological dependence. Ben distrusts himself to such an extreme degree that he relies completely on the alcohol to take control of his emotional state. He doesn't know how to approach social situations anymore, and simply coasts along to wherever the buzz will take him: as he hits on a disinterested woman (Valeria Golino) at the bar that serves as his L.A. haunt, he submits to a pendulous non-strategy, swinging from casual introductions to excessive silliness to egotistical directness to pitiable depression with impossible ease. Ultimately, Ben seems comfortable in letting alcohol dictate him before anyone else ("Maybe I shouldn't breathe so much, Terri! Hahaaaaaaa...") but his inability to find a woman still represents failure, and Cage sees that compounding sense of failure as the factor that finally overtakes Ben's unreasonably high tolerance for alcohol--the painful, gasping transition into numbness finally turns him to a pathetic stagger trying desperately to disguise itself as euphoria.

But in that attempt to feign happiness, you can sense an obligation to the daily grind that prevents him from just offing himself; you can locate moments when his former personality peeks its head out of the grave. Even as his colleagues sever their ties with him, Cage drops little indications that Ben was, at some point, a brilliant man and a good friend. As a Hollywood producer, he must have had a sharp eye for scripts: when he blasts a self-destructive monologue into a tape recorder while staring at his muse-of-the-moment, a blond bank teller ("if you spread your legs and had bourbon dripping from your breasts, and your pussy, [...] then, I would have a purpose--to could clean you up--and that, that!, would prove that I'm worth something"), he drips with creative obsession, cataloging his thoughts with confidence and urgency because it won't be long before the last shred of his talent drifts off into infinity. This sense of focus helps us better understand how this man could chug a bottle of vodka with such complete abandon, long after any rejuvenating effects have left him--eventually, the obsession is all that remains. "I'm sorry," Ben tells his boss upon being (very gently) fired, just barely suppressing a weeping fit. It's Ben/Cage's only moment of genuine remorse, extinguished seconds later by a stone-faced declaration that he will move out to Las Vegas. You soon realize that you have witnessed the final swing of the pendulum, the final death twitch of the man Ben once was and whatever prevented him from destroying himself for good. Personality no longer matters.

Physical evidence of his existence is the first thing to go, and already we see Ben/Cage trying to forge the distance between him and the rest of the world--he regards a salacious picture of his ex-wife as a foreign object before tossing it into the fire eating away at the rest of his possessions; he enters his son's room knowing that he should be sad but suppressing everything beyond the vaguest reasons why. On the other hand, he relishes the booze that he takes in on the long drive to Vegas, gasping down the stuff between inaudible ahhhhhhs. Looking beyond the weight that he has just thrown off his shoulders, it's the only indication that he ever actively enjoyed drinking outside of its most devastating soporific effects. This is the moment that clues us in to Ben's assertion later in the film, that "killing myself [is] a way to drink." It's interesting to contemplate the level of self-awareness that Cage injects into Ben, and how he acutely understands that the suicidal journey is no longer about how much he hates (or hated) himself, or any kind of self-punishment to that end--hell, if he could do nothing but drink until the end of time, he would. He smiles and chuckles in a "who gives a shit" manner that only regards the inevitable descent into death as just that: inevitable. This general indifference points to why his gravitation towards prostitute Sera (Elizabeth Shue) is so difficult to pin down. The film is haunted by the possibility that Sera's attraction to Ben are borne from her own masochistic tendencies, but Ben/Cage's cavalier approach of her brings into question whether or not he really recognizes her: he nearly ran this woman over during his grand entrance into the city, and got a middle finger in response. He doesn't seem to be actively looking for pleasure or abuse from her, but merely submits to another human necessity left in him--admitting that even dedicated misanthropes cannot stand to be complete hermits. But considering how the film will operate from this point, would he have treated another woman differently had she given him the same amount of leeway that Sera does? The real beauty of Shue's performance, meanwhile, is how she visibly struggles to reconcile between Ben/Cage's need for companionship and his disinterest in anything outside of his intrinsically lonely path.After all, there is mutual acceptance in their relationship, yes, and even mutual admiration, but not mutual love. "You're like some kinda antidote that mixes with the liquor and keeps me in balance," Ben/Cage decides (it's important to see this as a sudden decision), and that's how he will see her: as an appreciated, though perpetually external, force of sympathy. He expresses his concern that he doesn't want to drag her down with him, much in the same way that an atheist wouldn't want to actively tread on a friend's religious beliefs, and counters her request that he move in with her by forging a verbal contract that she can never, never, ask him to stop drinking. The creation of this pact is the only sentence he can say to her with any sense of conviction, and soon it's back to well, what the hell. Packing up his remaining bottles back at his motel, he practices his sincerity in an almost sing-songy lilt: "Yes, I'm crazy about you. Okay?" (That last word is spoken with a peculiar shortness that recalls his petulant response to Sera's demands for an apology after nearly hitting her with his car.) His claims that he is already in love with her and that he "wanted to come to [her] clean" are half-conscious lies, but he recites them with a weary straightforwardness that hopes she will know they are lies but just go along with them anyway. In his desire to maintain distance, Ben/Cage adheres to a warped sense of verisimilitude, one not necessarily borne of drunkenness but one that quantifies the dichotomy of the drunk: the expectation for others to believe in vino veritas while maintaining that they shouldn't trust anything he says while under the influence.
However, from this point on, Ben's drunkenness no longer guides his actions and desires--it defines them in every sense of the word. The symptoms of alcoholism are now firmly established as personality traits, and when Ben and Sera go out for a night of gambling, Cage lets go of the wheel, acting completely on impulse. No swings, no transitions. He sees something, he wants it, he gets it--there's a brief, terrifying moment in which he jumps at Sera and slams her against a slot machine before leaning in for a kiss. Another, more pivotal moment occurs at the blackjack table, when the booze takes its toll and he slumps into his hands. A concerned waitress approaches him, so he orders a Bloody Mary--and suddenly, he swings his neck around sharply: "What? What?! No! NO! Fuck, you fuck!" He continues to curse at the top of his lungs as he topples over the table and starts thrashing at it wildly. At first you think that the waitress set him off by refusing to give him the Bloody Mary he just ordered; but no, she seemed willing to oblige him. Soon the security guards are upon him, and he starts screaming as they drag him away: "You can't judge me! You--I am his father! I am his father!" His ghoulish wailing indicates that this has been a long time coming, and finally exposes the fact that he has not completely rid himself of the emotions that brought him here. Theswre's a brief hint of Ben/Cage's suppressed rage earlier in the film, when he responds to a lecture from the L.A. bartender--his brow furrows and his teeth clench as he recites "I appreciate your concern" in a tone of voice that barely conceals "just pour me another drink, asshole." The sharp release here conjures images of endless arguments and ugly divorce proceedings, with Ben swallowing the totality of his anger and sorrow to maintain some modicum of dignity. At this moment, however, Ben has no dignity left, and the bouts with delirium tremens serve as his only catharsis.

Despite her obvious love for him--or, at least, what he represents--Sera's actions on Ben's behalf (escorting him out of the casino, cleaning him up, buying him a hip flask) do not seem to affect him beyond thanking her and telling her that she is an "angel." He offers her gifts and tells bad jokes in a very perfunctory manner, as if he has determined that he has found a woman who will tolerate him, and all women must be treated in precisely the same way--a mentality that we realize just one scene earlier, when he treats a girl at a biker bar in an almost identical manner before getting his nose smashed in by her boyfriend. There are very, very brief moments when he seems to regret that he cannot muster the same level of concern for Sera that she has invested in him--particularly noticeable when he makes a snap decision to insult her in a bid to break away--but the dynamic between them simply is what it is. When he nonchalantly walks into the pool at another motel, bottle in hand, Sera jumps in to "save" him with an underwater kiss, and there is absolutely no passion behind it; there is more direct intent in the way Ben/Cage places his thumb over the bottle to keep the precious liquid from escaping. However, the next few scenes finally expose some unconscious sense of gratitude: she pours liquor over her breasts and Ben suckles it from them, a moment, long implied, that finally literalizes the film's pseudo-Oedipal overtones.

"I wanna ge'my drinky," he says as they get up--he stumbles back too fast and falls into a nearby glass table. Despite the shards now embedded in his back, Ben/Cage laughs and cracks jokes with a genuine freedom that has gone unheard since the film began ("I'm like a prickly pear," he hoots with a half-British accent)--he has finally located the purely theoretical sense of worth for which he pined back when he stared at that bank teller with lust and self-loathing. But the rediscovery of his long-sought-after purpose means that it has been simultaneously fulfilled, and there is a tacit understanding that the final descent has begun. The haunting spirit of his past has at last been exorcised--but it's doubtful that Ben realizes what he has accomplished, or why this represents his personal death knell. Indifference to the world around him has encompassed him to such a degree that it has reduced him to an infinite loop of stimulus-response; the dearth of any conscious/unconscious goals (not to mention the onset of brain damage) has finally left him without any knowledge of what he wants. All that's left is a quaking zombie clinging onto his rudimentary sense of object permanence, desperate to know that Sera and alcohol are still a constant presence.
But after Ben baptizes this new stage of living death in a shower of vodka, Sera pleads with him to see a doctor, carefully dancing around any implication that he needs to stop drinking. Although he cannot communicate beyond a jumble of infantile syllables ("Sera... I nagonsee doctor"), Ben/Cage's thousand-mile stare still exudes a childlike understanding of betrayal. You can feel him slowly piecing together the indirect logic of this request: a doctor will only tell him to stop drinking, and therefore Sera has broken their cardinal rule. Like so many aspects of their relationship, the discussion ends without a proper conclusion; Sera goes off to work while Ben works off his last vestige of life at the craps table, where he attracts the attention of a buxom young woman. Considering how the last few days (weeks?) have destroyed any pretense of charm, coherence or sex drive, it may be difficult to see how or why Ben could attract anyone on the casino floor--even another prostitute. But while these surroundings have given Ben/Cage a brief visceral charge in the past, by throwing his last bit of energy into a shrieking rage ("snake eyeeeeeeeeees!"), he becomes the quintessential Vegas gambler. He has completed the downward slide into nothingness; all that's left is a neanderthalic need to drink and throw dice and fuck. Once Sera catches them in bed, he knows that he has wronged her and that he must leave, but only on a very base, instinctual level--he must go out looking to fulfill his needs unhindered.
The next time they see each other, Sera has been gang-raped and Ben is in his final throes; there is nothing left but violent convulsions. "I wann'ed a'see you," he mutters to Sera on his deathbed. "You my angel." He apologizes to Sera and asks what happened to her face, again, in a very perfunctory manner--taking more trouble to locate the strength required to bring a nearby bottle to his lips. He lazily attempts to coax an erection, but Sera climbs on top of him anyway. He tells her: "You know I love you, yeah." Spoken as a half-hearted statement, not a question, because he knows that the charade can no longer be maintained--and then, after several agonizing seconds of limp sex, Ben "climaxes." This release is Cage's tour de force moment: a deadpan wheeze that implies an orgasm but never actually convinces you that one has occurred--Ben's final living act interpreted as a moment of inaction, and the confirmation that he has been incapable of love for a long, long time. As dawn breaks, Ben is almost completely paralyzed--but he manages to turn his neck around and see Sera, still at his side. "Wowwwww," he croaks, staring into the beyond with newfound comprehension. That's the paramount tragedy of the film and the performance: he could no longer feel it, he refused to see it, and he never even recognized it until the very moment his physical self finally caught up with his bleak worldview.

All the Ordinary People: Honeymoon in Vegas and It Could Happen to You

Prompted by what I perceived to be the fatal flaw of Neil LaBute's version of The Wicker Man, I doubted that Nicolas Cage could really play an Everyman in any sense of the word; I figured him to be too unique an individual to carry the weight of any generic representation of culture or gender. But the validity of this assessment comes into question with the rediscovery of Andrew Bergman, who brings that concept right to the forefront in an early line of dialogue in his first film with Cage, Honeymoon in Vegas. "Your problem is you're much too beautiful for this kind of work," private detective Jack Singer (Cage) tells his girlfriend, Betsy (Sarah Jessica Parker), as he snaps pictures of an unfaithful husband from afar. "Me--I'm Everyman." In casting such a notoriously unpredictable personality as the Everyman not once, but twice, Bergman hopes to examine what that term really means in a fictional and realistic sense.

Honeymoon in Vegas starts things off by presenting the effects of an early family life. At first, Anne Bancroft seems to be somewhat underutilized in a cameo as Jack's mother, but the brief interplay between the actors sets up Jack/Cage's personality nicely: their relationship seems awfully matter-of-fact. Based solely on her inflection, the request that her son remain unmarried on the basis that "no girl could ever love you like I did" doesn't feel crazy or possessive; it's presented like a logical conclusion. Jack/Cage responds, "Mom, that's a huge thing to ask," in such a way that suggests that he's about to enumerate the reasons why he can't--shortly before Mom shuffles off the mortal coil and leaves her boy screaming his promises. Jack is his mother's son, an honest fellow who comes to complex conclusions (when he very reasonably argues that a dream about his naked mother has no sexual basis--"it was about cleanliness!"--you can't help but believe him), and he sees the ins and outs of his profession as clear evidence that she was right after all, that the promise was not made in vain, and he can maintain his integrity unashamed. But he loves Betsy, so in the brief scenarios that send us from New York to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding, Jack/Cage's wincing reluctance to settle down with Betsy doesn't appear to stem from a fear of commitment--or even strict mommy issues--so much a perceived betrayal of principles. Even as the performance turns a very distinct corner in the second act of the film, he maintains a cavalier attitude about his personal life, volunteering information about the father who abandoned him so dismissively that you have to imagine that he's passed the logical answer to that devastating childhood memory through his mind a thousand times over.
Cage's aforementioned turning point in comes during the fateful poker game that sets the plot proper into motion. Jack/Cage's straightforward nature makes him a more-than-capable card player--cool, collected, difficult to read. When another player doubts his confidence during a high-stakes bet, he replies, "that's your constitutional right," a phrase spoken with the kind of impossible savvy that makes you somewhat jealous that you've never said that during a game of poker. It seems to steadily increase as the game drags on, but the buildup ends with a harsh plummet back to reality: he practically chokes on his own tongue when pro gambler Tommy Korman (James Caan) beats his straight flush with tens of thousands of dollars on the line--and he completely deflates when Tommy suggests that he "borrow" Betsy for the weekend to negate the debt. From that moment on, from his arguments with Betsy to his confrontations with complete strangers, Jack/Cage's emotional expressions are probably best described as miniature explosions lit with a quick fuse. The buildups to anger are so heated that the words run together into incoherence, resulting in a loud punctuation so self-contained that it bears an absolute minimum of fallout. The return to relative normalcy between these outbursts, forgive me, recall the indifference of a poker player between hands. However, it seems that the amazing pressure from the actual card game has completely sapped Jack/Cage's ability to be subtle, and now, when he has a point to make, he's so eager to lay down his cards and make it known that any words leading up to it are merely a necessary evil. Helpless to stop Tommy from whisking Betsy away to Hawaii, Jack returns to New York, and soon enough he blows up at a frequent client whose fears of marital infidelity (with Mike Tyson!) mirror his own: "SHUT UP! areyoutryintogivemeaHEARTATTACK?!"

"But his yelling and screaming isn't very funny," Alex Jackson argues in his review of Honeymoon in Vegas. "[...] When he is screaming at Pat Morita, Ben Stein or Peter Boyle you feel that he is really screaming at them. There are times when you're not sure that Cage really understands what kind of movie he is in; he's bringing depth and pain where none is really required." And it's true. Cage's exasperated treatment of the material is appropriate, but the performance only veers off into an unpleasant direction when he goes off on an independent search for Betsy, sent to lay waste to what I can only assume to be Andrew Bergman's personal bugaboos--disingenuous cabbies, long lines at the airport, and Marlon Brando. Does Bergman consider himself to be an Everyman, or a voice for the same? Bergman's personal stake in the Brando matter (as revenge for the verbal abuse heaped on his last film, The Freshman) brings up the question of legitimacy, and further, where Cage is supposed to fit: is he a reflection of the Everyman, an avatar of wish fulfillment for all the little indignities that John Q. Public has suffered, or something different entirely? Cage's very individualistic vision of Jack causes a rift between himself and Bergman's own vision of the material; unsurprisingly, they are fascinating to discuss on their own but readily fall apart when you try to apply them to each other. However, Alex puts it best in comparing Cage to James Caan here: "Cage in his fuck-ups proves to still be far more interesting than Caan in his modest successes." That goes double for just about everyone else here, too. Jack and Betsy seem like a believable enough couple, but that's because Parker is such a bland presence that she just kind of washes over Cage. And, while hindsight could point to Ben Stiller as a more appropriate lead, I dare you to come up with any moment delivered by Peter Boyle in weird-Brando mode that's half as memorable as Cage's dismissal of him: "Influence? helivesinaSHACK!"

Of course, there is the argument that the Everyman's cinematic function is to react incredulously/realistically to outlandish situations, and that Cage is perfect for the part in the sense that Honeymoon in Vegas eventually throws him outside his comfort zone as an actor and artist. The potshots at Brando conflict with Cage's contemporary "Method" sensibilities, and the film has absolutely no idea what to do with Elvis Presley--with its soundtrack ridiculously analogous to the antics onscreen ("Jailhouse Rock" accompanies Jack's trip to a Hawaiian police station), the only thing it really has to say about the King is that a lot of people dress up like him and that he made a lot of movies in Vegas and Hawaii. So when Jack hitches a ride back to Vegas with a band of skydiving Elvises, Cage's palpable discomfort is twofold: both character and actor are trapped in a world that is hardly emblematic of what they know and how they know it. Jack/Cage's nervous memorization of the order in which to pull his parachute's cords--"yellowthenredyellowthenredyellowthenred"--conveniently encapsulates his constant doubt that he can fit in with his wacky surroundings; when he is finally airborne and pulls the cords in the correct order, the relief he exudes seems to constitute acceptance of his world.

When Jack/Cage finally returns to Earth and into Betsy's arms, we realize that the entire experience has changed him again. the anger has faded, and his logically honest nature has been injected with a much-needed dose of good humor--acknowledging that his past behavior has been a little strange (explaining that a new dream of his mother has released him from his promise--"'course, she was naked," he adds as an afterthought). When all is said and done, when Jack and Betsy finally marry dressed as Elvis and a showgirl, Bergman and Cage reach a compromise; they seem to determine that there is no such thing as a genuine "Everyman," and the trick is to accept your personal weirdness and find a niche in a similarly weird world. It's kind of a cheap ending, truth be told, one that doesn't really assuage the marital insecurities that the film introduced--and nope, none of it is very funny. But you feel a little vindicated all the same, if only in the sense that actor and director are finally on the same page.

The myth of the Everyman is once again brought into question in Bergman's next film, It Could Happen to You. However, this time around he applies the concept to a self-aware fairy tale, and unlike the somewhat lackadaisical Honeymoon in Vegas, its performances are forced to establish those rules right off the bat: from the moment we are introduced to New York cop Charlie Lang, Cage is impossible to dislike; as waitress Yvonne Biasi, Bridget Fonda is preternaturally sympathetic; and, as Charlie's materialistic wife Muriel, Rosie Perez is genuinely grating on the soul, a mere sliver away from becoming unwatchable. But it's perfect. It seems like a rigid, literal adherence to the rules set by Screenwriting 101, but the cast of It Could Happen to You must essentially constitute the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with its performances conforming in such a way that everyone fits perfectly with the environment and each other: Charlie gives, Muriel takes; Charlie gives, Yvonne trusts.

As the film's resident Prince Charming, Charlie at first seems to be the apotheosis of the cinematic Everyman in the "ideal" sense--the average joe's image of himself as the Übermensch, beyond criticism on the sole basis that he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. While he is poor, he's a working stiff; while he is rich, he is an unabashed philanthropist. But Cage once again treats the Everyman as someone bound by his word, adding a dash of irony by interpreting the flaws necessary to constitute this archetypal character as Charlie's complete inability to be anything but virtuous. He "can't not leave a tip," which prompts him to split the theoretical winnings of a lottery ticket with Yvonne, as there's nothing left in his pocket--but watch as he struggles with how to approach her with the $4M winning ticket. George Bailey's life was tinged with personal disappointments, but doing the right thing still gave him great pleasure; on the other hand, Charlie/Cage seems genuinely concerned by the fact that he can't not do the right thing--a barely-concealed worry that his self-interest will be perpetually stampeded by an objective truth. Whenever confronted by any moral quandary, he gives off the slightest air of unwillingness--but bound by a fear that, if he doesn't have the temerity to keep his word or perform his job selflessly, his sense of reality will just come crashing down on him.

Eventually, once the media grabs hold of the headline-friendly story, Charlie/Cage's adherence to the categorical imperative evolves into a genuine anhedonic complex: obligation has reared its ugly head, and if he can't use his newfound fortune for the benefit of others, he simply can't function correctly; even then, it seems that he can never do enough for someone. Charlie/Cage's relationship with Muriel/Perez is something of an apathetic anchor to this end as he become a "yes dear" drone to her greedy ways--an act of technical unselfishness that keeps him active, but still prevents him from achieving any form of contentment. Remaining a cop on the beat is the only real consolation: "Don't be a hero," his partner Bo (Wendell Pierce) warns as Charlie sneaks into a robbery-in-progress with his gun drawn. "Don't worry," he responds; it's one of the few phrases he can utter with any kind of conviction at this point, because he is physically incapable of allowing himself to be considered a hero. A subsequent citation for bravery is not accepted in comfort until he announces his contribution to the Policemen's Widows' Fund; Knicks season tickets for Bo come with a cautious explanation that he could not get floor seats--every altruistic action seems like an apology.

Even when he drifts (even further) apart from Muriel and closer to Yvonne, he's unsure if it's the right thing to do--you can almost hear the internal monologue as he shares a post-dinner dance with Yvonne/Fonda; she seems relieved to have found a sympathetic spirit, but he's staring forward, brow furrowed, cycling through every possible permutation of this isn't right. He has to be inconveniencing someone, somewhere. Subsequent dates are similarly uncertain and awkward until Charlie can convince Yvonne to spend their time together philanthropically: offering free rides home on the subway and orchestrating a day at Yankee Stadium for the kids of Charlie's Queens neighborhood. Suddenly, Cage is nothing but relieved grins, completely at ease with Yvonne by his side because she sees past his insecurities and can only find an authentic heart in his generosity. "Why am I so nervous?" he says after their first, passionate kiss at the Plaza Hotel--after their villainous spouses have forced them both on the streets. "We've spent so much time together." "Maybe that's why," she responds. He's so nervous because he's so comfortable--and in that brief exchange is the key to Cage's impossible chemistry with Fonda, and the route to follow in his performance from this moment out.

Eventually, Charlie divorces Muriel, and willingly gives up his own million but plans a fight when she lays claim to Yvonne's share. Now that he's returned from riches back to rags, there's absolutely no need whatsoever to continue to emphasize that he's a kind, humble person. But it's not a matter of emphasis or establishment anymore because this is who Charlie is and there's simply no changing it. Through Yvonne/Fonda's easy-going companionship, Cage comes to accept his character's quirks and fosters an understanding of what brings him happiness--Charlie is still unwilling to let someone else suffer even the slightest inconvenience without remark, but he's a lot freer with his kindness, less worried about simply maintaining his personal sense of right and wrong. When he's forced to crash at Bo's place, Charlie tells his daughter, "Sure is nice of you to let me use your Barney blanket, Tracy"--and Cage says it with such tenderness and genuine, unburdened gratitude that my heart just rips in half.

Long story short: Muriel wins in court, while Charlie and Yvonne marry with a little financial assistance from the people of New York. Although It Could Happen to You is more or less obligated to end with "happily ever after," I found myself cringing at some of the dialogue that brings us to that inevitable conclusion ("because of you, I have you"). A more touching moment can be found immediately after the verdict, as the media circus descends upon Charlie. "Just shut up about her!" he cries, slamming a reporter against the courtroom wall upon the mere mention of Yvonne's name next to the word "adultery." It's a moment of sudden, unequivocal rage, uncommented upon and totally unlike Jack Singer's verbal blasts in Honeymoon in Vegas--quick, unforced, articulate. It's a moment that Charlie/Cage takes himself completely out of the equation, forgets completely about who's watching him or what's fair for everyone, and at last completes another cycle of true selflessness: steadfast defense of the woman he loves. Not to mention, of course, that this should also be the moment when the archetypal man fights a media perception of himself as someone easy to categorize.

The Rest is Up to You: Wild at Heart

If Blue Velvet was about the similarities between romantic love without sexuality and fetishistic love without identity--the search for balance from both leading to a violent collision--then David Lynch's next film, Wild at Heart, seems to further internalize that struggle by applying it to an exploration of non-directional passion and youthful infatuation. Through its careful consideration of maddening guitar riffs and exploding matches, the film points to a yearning for identity that will burn no matter where it is applied, and in doing so questions the validity of the romance between Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Fortune (Laura Dern). As is his usual practice, Lynch deliberately avoids any definitive explanation of his craft on Wild at Heart's DVD documentaries, and he takes a similar stance on his cast, speaking of them in only the broadest, most obvious terms: "Elvis became a key to Nic--Nic is more than that for sure, but that was a key element." A small, almost negligible example of Lynch's trust for his actors can be found in a contemporary making-of clip, as he gives Cage a simple direction of timing and finishes it off with, "...and then the rest is up to you, man." So it is--in exploring Sailor Ripley, Cage turns in a performance that becomes a self-examination and criticism of his own obsessions.

As ne'er-do-well Sailor, the influence of Elvis Presley on Cage is finally, completely, obviously unavoidable. He speaks in that familiar drawl and shoots karate moves at the air, given an introduction almost identical to that of Elvis' character in Jailhouse Rock, Vince Everett: killing a man in the heat of the moment and convicted of manslaughter. It strikes me as significant that Everett's two acts of violence in Jailhouse Rock should involve physical representations of music (punching his manslaughter victim against a jukebox; smashing his guitar to frighten a customer who is interrupting his performance at a nightclub), because they emphasize that Everett/Presley is at his most brazenly energetic when music is involved--a passion that eventually brings him fame and love. Cage seems to recognize this, and through the double-edged inspiration from Presley that defines character and actor, he establishes Sailor as a man suffering from the opposite problem; a man who feels too much looking for somewhere to pour his feelings, living in the shadow of an icon. It's an idea that dictates the manslaughter that sends Sailor to the pokey at the opening of the film: we are told that Sailor loves Lula, but you can't see that love when he brutally beats hired killer Bobby Lee Lemon (Gregg Dandridge) to death as she screams his name, terrified--nor when he points a blood-stained finger at Lula's mother, Marietta (Diane Ladd).

Sailor's attempt to locate his passion, his identity, is further exemplified by his painfully obvious attempts to convince others of his complexity. Once he is released from prison, he begins to recite a rehearsed mantra about his snakeskin jacket (the property of Cage, written into the script at his request) and how it "represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom." He says this again after a punk at the local nightclub makes the mistake of grinding against Lula during a strobe-lit dance sequence, which ends abruptly when Sailor silences the room with a wave of his hand. Beginning with this Fonzie-like act, you're never quite sure how much of Sailor/Cage is a put-on. He now delivers the Elvis accent in a sweaty growl, offering this guy the option to apologize and walk away but already burning with a resolution to kick his ass. Once the punk insults the jacket, you know that it's over; it's almost a relief when he smacks the guy down with minimal incident, as we're already kind of scared to learn what else this man is capable of when his fragile self-image is questioned. But then comes his rendition of "Love Me," an even stickier moment in which Sailor/Cage attempts to emulate Presley down to every little vocal quirk--later in the film, while traveling through New Orleans, he will recite the first verse with precisely the same inflection. Just what is his self-image? Does he see Lula as an extension of it? Is there really anything to Sailor himself?


Like Eraserhead's Henry Spencer or Blue Velvet's Jeffrey Beaumont, Sailor is the closest approximation to the viewer in Lynch's world, thrown into a bizarre realm of the subconscious only to find that he himself is not as normal as he once thought--his superficial adulation consumes him in such a way that he attempts to pawn himself off as detached and superior. When Lula tells a story about her schizophrenic cousin Dell (Crispin Glover, of course), Sailor/Cage stares directly at us through the fourth wall, as if quietly looking for sympathy from somewhere outside of this weird world; note that Sailor's own stories (a weird, bawdy sex tale; the sad fate of his parents) attempt to throw him into a role of blamelessness. This nonplussed façade is a cornerstone of Cage's performance, a sometimes-conscious avoidance tactic that attempts to anything that could associate Sailor with his frightening surroundings through New Orleans and Big Tuna: his latent rage (after several short-fused bursts of anger, Sailor's accusatory finger at Marietta is revealed to be a carefully considered, slow-burn "don't fuck with me"), his uncertainty (a sex scene between Sailor and Lula is interrupted by a brief, contemplative pause between thrusts) and his fear (his wonderfully frantic, impossibly athletic dance number at Lula's frenzied behest--after searching the car radio for a broadcast that doesn't involve murder or rape). He belongs here, but he's trying so hard to deny it. Dern's response to Cage is an interesting one--a victim of incest, Lula seems slightly more aware of what the world is capable of (being the one to declare that the world is "wild at heart and weird on top"), but attempts to imitate his suave indifference while exposing her faults more readily, particularly when her man is involved. Does she believe that Sailor is her messiah, or is she humoring him?
The little tics in Sailor/Cage's own self-crafted personality only accentuate when Sailor meets Willem Dafoe's sleazy Bobby Peru, who confronts him with a can't-miss plan to rob a local feed store after he sexually assaults Lula. As they discuss this over a round of drinks, listen to Sailor/Cage's voice as he pieces together that Lula has told Bobby that she's pregnant--slowly feeling the birth of a hangover, struggling to maintain his superficial demeanor. He has an inkling that this creep has done something to her, but he seems more concerned that he could not extract that information himself (she had to write it down for him); that his failure to do so will adversely affect his manhood in the eyes of others. Once the robbery is revealed to be a botched murder plot and Sailor is face-down in the dirt, the gentlemanly accent has completely disappeared, replaced by a frightened quiver that approaches Cage's own timid squeezebox from Peggy Sue Got Married.

Once Sailor is released from prison and retrieved by Lula five years later, Cage takes an interesting turn, slowly building his character up from his humble stance and back to his ivory tower of cool. At first gentle and smiling at the sight of his son Pace, he sees an opportunity to resuscitate his personality when his presence forces Lula to collapse into an emotional heap. Quickly determining that he must leave this situation with cinematic bravado to keep his image intact, Sailor/Cage does his best to separate himself from the situation--offering dispassionate, forget-me kisses to Lula and Pace (along with a quote from a Cisco Kid flick) and slowly walking off as if expecting the film to end here, in a Shane-like fashion. Lacking the heartbroken self-loathing of H. I. McDunnough's would-be departure in Raising Arizona, his demeanor brings into question how much he really loves Lula (or, at least, how much he thinks he loves her), so consumed with his symbols of individuality that he can't see anything else. But we continue on, following Sailor as he runs into a gang dressed similarly to the man he assaulted at the nightclub; he pulls a cigarette from the carton with his teeth, takes a long drag, and casually dismisses his assailants: "What d'you faggots want?" It seems phony, the moment that Sailor/Cage completely submits to his media-driven swagger--and it's immediately followed by the moment that the crowd beats the shit out of him.
A hallucinatory encounter with The Wizard of Oz's Good Witch (Sheryl Lee) humbles Sailor/Cage again, a voice-crack in his own claim that he is "wild at heart" repeating the mere hint of that scared little boy underneath. He staggers to his feet, apologizing and thanking his assailants as that familiar good ol' boy--but then, for a moment, he breaks free of those pretensions, screaming Lula's name to the heavens through his busted nose and making an uncharacteristically hasty exit to find her. With his ego deflated, he finally realizes that he does love Lula because she knows that there's more to him than what he projects, and she has forced him to understand it as well. Cage's subsequent rendition of "Love Me Tender" (Sailor's marriage proposal) is a beautifully imperfect scene, the most genuine moment of undying love in the whole picture--the performance of the song shaking uncomfortably between Elvis imitation and that other personality that we the audience never formally meet. But you eventually realize that this is how Cage has been playing Sailor the whole time, only now allowing Sailor to understand that the images that we try to impress upon others still speak volumes about ourselves. It would have been a cheat to abandon Elvis altogether, because the very fact of this scene demonstrates that "E" is still a big part of who he is. There's no changing who Sailor is, or what comprises his personality; the snakeskin jacket is intact, the pretensions are still there, but we can still sense the "eureka" moment of self-understanding. It somehow brings the plastic-fantastic musical Grease to mind and, if it had been an honest film, how it would have ended like Wild at Heart*: with a loving affirmation that you are who you are--a fucked-up alchemic blend of your idols, influences, and emotions.

* Seven years before Face/Off, the directly contradictive themes of Grease and Wild at Heart (including the treatment of nostalgia for the same approximate era) presented their own little rendition of Travolta versus Cage which, however indirectly, would similarly question the nature and structure of identity and subvert the knee-jerk concepts of "good" and "bad." Consider dark, deadly Sailor Ripley (Cage/Troy)--who finally realizes who he is in totality thanks to his girlfriend's love--and place him against the sanitized good guy Danny Zuko (Travolta/Archer), prepared to make superficial changes to his lifestyle but abandoning them when his girl appears willing to (more permanently) conform to his own comfortable parameters of reality with no questions asked.

Shadows in the Spotlight: Peggy Sue Got Married and Raising Arizona

"There's no Godfather-like pathos to mine in this Francis Ford Coppola dramedy," or so claims the Netflix description of Peggy Sue Got Married. At first, it sounds like sniveling, "where did he go wrong" sarcasm in relation to Coppola's astonishing body of work through the '70s--but you finally watch the movie and you can't help but think, Well, why isn't there any? Somehow the story of a woman transported twenty-five years into the past, back to the halcyon days of high school, feels like it should carry a lot more weight than it does here. But I'm beginning to suspect that time travel films only have the capacity to be great (the first two Back to the Future films, Time After Time, even Frequency and Groundhog Day, in a sense) when your travellers are complete aliens at the mercy of an uncrossable generation gap. Bring them back to a familiar era and it's just a nostalgia trip, the curious fulfillment of regrets and what-if scenarios carried out in the same manner as a play date with action figures representing the people in your life. Oh, if only you had been nicer to that kid, if only you had asked that dreamy boy out on a date--well, to whom could it possibly matter outside of your dumb ass? Peggy Sue Got Married is told from such a one-sided perspective that it's almost suffocating.

It's only natural that we should land on Coppola's nephew Nicolas Cage as a lonely beacon of interest--as Charlie Bodell (Peggy Sue's 1960 beau-turned-1985 estranged husband), he is as close to an alien as his identity will allow as a resident of this era. Critical examinations can't seem to decide whether Cage based his squeaky, naïve accent on Gumby's pal Pokey or Donald Duck, both of which he has claimed at various times--it's a brilliant compromise between the two, if you ask me, one that finds a literalized voice to teenage angst: the desire to fit in with your dull-as-dishwater surroundings, constantly haunted by the threat that your emotions will bubble over uncontrollably. Working from that "outcast" line of thought, by the way, you can find an early indication of Cage's strange link to vampirism, three years before Vampire's Kiss. Take a look at our two introductions to Charlie in a physical form: a foreboding, almost supernatural presence in 1985, a mysterious figure watching passively from the shadows; and "later," this is referenced to comic effect in 1960, adopting a Hollywoodized Romanian accent as he approaches the time-displaced Peggy Sue during a blood drive.

It's this kind of tease that makes me wish the film looked beyond the obnoxious, self-centered titular character; I particularly ached to see more scenes that featured Cage and Jim Carrey as old buddies in the same doo-wop group. More than just a desire to see a couple of irrepressable screen presences act the part of Martin and Lewis, however, they share a real kinship in this film. Their personalities and interactions here seem to better explore the wounds that a figurative and literal return to high school would hypothetically open, something that the film itself casually sidesteps in letting Kathleen Turner do whatever the fuck it is that she does here. (Seriously, I'm mystified.) There's a precious scene during the 1985 school reunion when Carrey's Walter Getz flies into humorous faux-outrage when the school nerd (Barry Miller) is singled out as a success; in 1960, he offers an exaggerated gag at the suggestion that the nerd is writing a book, which might expose gentle ribbing as genuine hatred spread out across several decades. Doubtful that anyone but Carrey could possess the bombastic energy necessary to pull that off, and Cage seems like the other side of the same coin, exuding a sense of projective defeat in his past and future. It's as if the older Charlie has been secretly transported back to the past along with Peggy Sue, as if he knows that his plans for life and love will result in rejection twenty-five years later. It's this general emotion that leads to another near-vampiric moment--Charlie/Cage's weird, orgasmic gasp just before locking lips with Peggy Sue upon the suggestion of dancing as a mating ritual.

The only time that Charlie/Cage seems at ease is when he's singing in that doo-wop group, The Definitions. Witnessing Cage's complete comfort in this scenario gives a slight indication as to why, from his adulation of Elvis and Brando to his onscreen indulgence in leather-jacketed motorcycle rebellion, the actor seems so keen to emulate the artistic and cultural trends of the 1950s: he subscribes to a similar sense of incompleteness, a visceral stream-of-consciousness that often results in breathy, guttural noises and half-thought expressions. (Compare Cage's performance here to that of Kevin J. O'Connor, who quakes with false intensity and subsequently becomes a pale parody of Beat poetry.) The excitement and cheer to this effect inverts after some music bigwig informs Charlie that he just won't make it in the industry: "Elvis is dead--that's Ajax," he tells Peggy Sue when she mistakes one of his dogs for another. Cage drops the first half of this phrase with such leaden finality that the heartbreak of a dead dream is all that we can hear; even we, in the ironic dead-Elvis age, cannot hear it any other way.

The key scene for Cage/Charlie comes earlier, however--not when things are at their bleakest but when they are at their most uncertain. Cage understands that Charlie is at his absolute lowest when he allows his mind to tear itself apart with doubt. After a brief, creepy moment wherein Charlie silently contemplates smothering Peggy Sue in her sleep, she admits that she and Mike (O'Connor) had "gone for a ride." He grabs her in a brief rage; the DVD subtitles claim that Charlie's response is "Then it's true! Damn it!", but it comes out like a vague mashup of enraged syllables, an almost cathartic burst of emotion upon a partial explanation. In suggesting Cage as her romantic opposite in Moonstruck, Cher supposedly likened his performance in Peggy Sue Got Married to watching a two-hour car crash--and this is the scene that best exemplifies those sentiments, as Charlie ever-so-slowly falls apart while recounting the only kind of analogy that he can muster: "When The Monotones did 'Book of Love', chapter four--'you break up, won't you give it one more chance'--I'm thinking, 'Did we break up?'" On the last two words, Charlie/Cage's voice completely submits to the Donald Duckness and seems to hit a pocket of helium. He clasps his neck, clears his throat and continues. Accidental or not, the moment's integration into the film represents Coppola's ultimate defense of his nephew's performance, and his understanding that Cage's treatment was the right one for the role: only barely keeping it together as a messy collection of desires and preconceived notions, liable to burst at any moment.

Trading the shadow cast by Kathleen Turner's overbearing presence for the shadow cast by the Coen Brothers' burgeoning auteurism in Raising Arizona, Cage also injects a dose of sad humility into H. I. "Hi" McDunnough, a corner store-robbing recidivist sporting a head of hair that shuffles through various stages of messiness between scenes and shots alike. The problem with the film itself is that the Coens understand the basic forces at play in a screwball comedy, but don't spend enough time exploring their characters to give any credence to the wacky scenarios into which they are thrown. On three separate occasions, William Forsythe and John Goodman spend a good minute or so screaming at the top of their lungs, and it's a hollow release. There's a little sorrow to be felt when it is realized that Cage will be playing the straight man--you keep thinking that he could probably teach everyone a thing or two about screaming with the correct level of crazed intensity. But the fact that this outrageous man is poised as the voice of reason contained in a world of insanity results in a strange passion that Raising Arizona has difficulty locating on its own.

Indeed, the hindsight benefited by Cage's career seems to point to casting against type, ideologically as well as practically: bounty hunter/Leonean spectre of death Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb, an obvious progenitor of No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh) is introduced into the mix via one of Hi's precognitive dreams, described by him as "the lone biker of the apocalypse; a man with the powers of hell at his command." Knowing all that we know about Cage now, the implications are impossible to ignore--Smalls is like Johnny Blaze, n'est-ce pas? I particularly like the disgusted quiver in Cage's voice, trying so hard to convince us that he didn't think that this motorcycle rebel was the awesomest thing ever. That might seem like a stretch, but it's not like it could have been accidentally prescient, either; by posing lifelong comic book fan Cage (Nicholas Coppola's stage name was chosen in honor of Luke Cage, Power Man) as the horrified/awed narrator for this obviously Ghost Rider-like entity, Raising Arizona reflects on our own reaction to the cinematic culture of cool, admiring this demonic man with a satisfied grin as he casually blows bunnies and lizards to kingdom come.

As its silly baby-kidnapping plotline progresses, Raising Arizona becomes something of a Feed the Kitty scenario, with the whole world envisioned as a domino-effect deathtrap and Cage/Hi playing the role of both oblivious victim and exasperated savior. (The film directly acknowledges its forebears early on, during the scene in which Hi attempts to kidnap an Arizona quint while leaving the others undisturbed, sweat pouring down his face.) Having successfully survived his three strikes as a petty criminal, Hi has acquired a certain level of invincibility, given the supernatural ability to outrun both the ever-compounding forces of law and death in the film's slapstick centerpiece--a sequence that succeeds thanks to Cage's dedicated concentration, a certain feeling of hidden exasperation that very rarely betrays the fact that Hi is playing it all by ear.
This newfound aura hasn't come without a price, however, as realized by one of Cage's subtlest moves as Hi: his right eye involuntarily twitches whenever he is placed in immediate danger from another human being--such as his knock-down, drag-out brawls with Gale (Goodman) and Smalls in the third act of the film--as if he's already prepared for the black eye he's about to receive. Certainly Hi tries to fight back, but his battle cries come in the form of scratchy, high-pitched howls and confused babbling, leaving his eye as the only honest indicator of how he feels about his predicament. It's an intentionally half-hearted performance that interprets the character's misanthropic tendencies as embarrassed loneliness: note that, even when he is knocked to the floor while tied to a chair, Hi only lets loose with his deepest, loudest shout after he has been assured that his assailants will not be returning--watch Cage turn a bright shade of red the instant that Gale closes the door for the final time. It all brings into question an earlier scene in which Hi winks with his right eye while trying to convince his wife Ed (Holly Hunter) to let him play with old friends, then immediately submits when she refuses. Throughout the film, Hi/Cage acts the part of a sensitive, capable hero when alone, but becomes a beaten dog whenever anyone else enters the picture. He's so humbled by his checkered past and how he has unintentionally caused harm to others that he can't even recognize how special he is.
How, then, do you take the moment when Hi kills Smalls, pulling the pin from a grenade on his vest seconds after learning that they share the same Woody Woodpecker tattoo? "I'm sorry," Hi just barely whispers with the pin dangling from his fingers, his eye having finally closed from the beating he's received. Whether Hi is Smalls' son, whether he is a simple representation of his criminal past, or whether he recognizes that they're both on the same mad, murderous quest--he seems to know that he's killing a part of himself. (Which, in itself, offers another level to Hi's fear of Smalls.) The brief, shit-eating grin that Cage wears as he scrambles to his feet, however, almost renders the following emotional redemption redundant: it's a flash of comprehension that someone else will be taking the lumps from now on, a transferrence of Hi's unwanted identities as a perpetual criminal and cosmic whipping boy into an appropriate avatar that is subsequently destroyed. Although Hi seems to have his doubts until the very final moments before the end credits, the fear and loathing leaves Cage after this altercation, at last presenting himself to the world, emotionally naked--not a gesture that represents Hi throwing in the towel, but recognition that he can take on all comers.

Nosferatu, Arschloch der Nacht: Vampire's Kiss

It may seem like a matter of putting the hopelessly-crazy cart before the socially-integrable horse to start off a Nicolas Cage retrospective with Vampire's Kiss, but it may be the film that best represents my intentions in starting this little project: the exploration of Nic's routinely over-the-top acting beyond giggling face value. In a wonderful feature-length commentary for the film with director Robert Bierman, Cage mentions that "over-the-top is one of those things that doesn't work with me, 'cause I don't believe in such a thing. I feel that it's just stylistic choices--and this was obviously a choice to use grand gesture and go bigger." A reasonable enough explanation, because a deeper look validates his performance here as something more than just madness for madness' sake--it may be hilarious when the actor flails his arms and screams the alphabet, but realize that this occurs upon the slight suggestion that his character has committed a misdeed and you'll find that pinning everything down becomes a lot more difficult.
After all, Vampire's Kiss isn't about a man descending into insanity so much as it is about a neurotic corporate asshole's transformative search for redemption--it avoids the pitfalls of Michael Clayton, however, by better realizing that such people are trapped by what they know, and by how they have operated their entire lives in clawing their way to the top; their idea of redemption only means being absolved of wrongdoing. The film doesn't have an ounce of sympathy for its lead character, Peter Loew (Cage), by any account a complete fraud in everything that he does: his dragging, "Continental" accent is a put-on to make himself seem more worldly (Cage mentions that he got the idea from his father, who adopted the same accent as a professor of comparative literature); he has little desire to admit fault during sessions with his therapist, Dr. Glaser (Elizabeth Ashley); and his day job as a literary agent seems to have little consequence beyond harassing his secretaries. It eventually wears down on him when he recognizes some never-fully-explained sexual inadequacy in the form of a wayward bat. After what is surely his most flagrantly prickish act (without a second thought, he skips out on love-interest-of-the-moment Jackie (Kasi Lemmons) when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom), he receives a sharp rebuke on his answering machine--to which he drawls a depressed response from his ersatz psychiatrist's couch. ("Yeahhhh, well fuck youuuu tooooo, sister.") Loew finally recognizes that he is a bad person and sets out to do something about it: make sure that he can come up with a good excuse. In that case, you could call the preceding scene--his vampiric encounter with Rachel (Jennifer Beals)--a retroactive fantasy, a one-night-stand purposely misinterpreted to set a plan into motion.
At first, Loew's regular bouts with hallucination feel like a forged doctor's note, a conscious attempt to exploit his innate eccentricity--and there's a distinct feeling that he already gets away with a lot of things based on that alone--entering a false plea of insanity to pardon everything that he's ever done. (Note that, after a hollow apology to Jackie, Loew's first post-bite vision of Rachel prevents him from attending a follow-up date.) The problem is, of course, that the plan works too well. In order to convince others that his natural douchebaggery is worthy of forgiveness, he believes that he must convince himself that he is a monster controlled by supernatural urges--eventually ending with his death in a state of grace mandated by "it wasn't his fault." Cage's primary treatment of the material as slow transformation (rather than as simple loss of mental capacity) can be traced to an early scene: after chanting his secretary Alva's (Maria Conchita Alonso) name from a mumble to a shout, Loew finally storms out of his office--and in one athletic move, he leaps on top of a desk and points an accusatory finger at her: "There you are!" When Alva instinctively runs out to the hallway, notice how Loew initially gives "chase"--mixing the confident stride of a go-go eighties power-player with the unstoppable gait of Michael Myers.

But the most prominent among Cage's touted influences in playing Loew (alongside Mick Jagger and the Brando of Reflections in a Golden Eye) is another great screen bogeyman, Max Schreck. Only one scene shows Loew watching Nosferatu, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had become a nightly ritual for him, picking up villainous traits here and there in order to better convince others that he is a menace to society that must be vanquished. In that, there's another example of how you can follow Cage's inexorable build-up--after cruelly berating Alva with great big bug-eyes and a weird, rectangular grin, he calls after her with a touch of sadness in his voice: "Don't you wanna use your gun, Alva?" Loew soon realizes (after the "formal" viewing of Nosferatu) that he must adapt some rudimentary sense of charm before he can convince anyone that this run-of-the-mill eccentric dickhead has transformed into a vampire. Thusly come some of the oddest scenes in a film full of much louder oddities: shortly after eating a cockroach, Cage/Loew does his best to embody Schreck in his entirety, visiting Alva's home when she fakes sick. He attempts to curry her favor with apologies and "soup!" while arching his shoulders and tucking his arms into his body in such a way that he comes to resemble a crooked, German Expressionist stick. At last, after this bout of charm is replaced with more invective, Alva is convinced to fill her gun with blanks provided by her brother Emilio (Bob Lujan).

Alas, Loew's imagined self-pity reaches its apex when he discovers that the blanks fail to do him in, crying out loud, literal sobs of "boo hoo" as Alva lies unconscious next to him. It seems that, in his latest attempt to turn Alva into his personal Van Helsing, Loew has raped her--but it is of no concern to him. Such a self-conscious act of prefab emotion draws attention to the several layers of "actor" that embody this character (Cage as Loew as "Continental" Loew as "Vampire" Loew) and the "Method" attempt to bypass anything that could possibly stand in the way of the performance. It's an idea enforced by Loew's subsequent spree through the streets of New York ("I'm a vampi-yah! I'm a vampi-yah!") which perfectly captures Cage's palpable joy at being able to shake loose any misgivings and go bigger, to use those grand gestures--and, handily, it also reflects Loew's masked elation at achieving a vital step towards freedom from responsibility.

But Loew finds that he is in need of external validation, because his "former" self is gnawing away at his newly-discovered vampirism--with only a few dollar bills in his wallet (never mind the credit card), Loew plays the cheapskate, eschewing professionally-crafted fangs in favor of dime-store plastic. The scenes that follow may be inherently ridiculous--acknowledged by the dramatic music sting when Loew sticks the fangs in his mouth--but watch how Cage plays the next few scenes, with his forays into exaggeration borne of complete earnest: Loew's call to his therapist through his new choppers (his desperate pleas to reschedule an appointment are actually heartrending in a knee-jerk pathetic kind of way); the capture and devouring of a pigeon; and finally the murder-by-neckbite of a young woman at a discotheque--which plays out like a self-contained, minute-long version of Dracula and represents Cage/Loew's most valiant attempt to encompass his identity in the hallucination. But it's all for naught--even his visions of Rachel have begun to mock him for his inability to completely succumb to the night.

And so he continues into the dawn, begging for someone to kill him with a makeshift stake. Wandering down the street, wailing at the top of his lungs, he soon walks face-first into the corner of a building (silent horror becomes silent slapstick), an interruption which he naturally interprets as his appointment with his therapist. The scene alternates between the reality and the imaginary; the latter features a newly-invigorated Loew, announcing that he has decided to abandon his therapy sessions and that he will search for love on his own. What I really adore about Cage here is that, cutting back and forth as they do, the two versions of Loew flow together so nicely--the upstanding, self-sufficient hero and the slobbering, blood-drenched maniac are both such outrageous fantasies on either side of an acting spectrum that they circle around and meet each other.

It seems to be a last-ditch effort to let Loew have his cake and eat it too: "Dr. Glaser" rationalizes away any guilt from the rape and the murder (presented here, of course, as an after-thought fear of consequence) as "a little id release" and even pairs him with "Sharon," a theoretically perfect soulmate who, we gather, comes to dog him about his "identity" as a vampire, until--"God damn it, what did I just say?!"--he launches into a hate-filled diatribe directed at thin air. After so many moments that could be interpreted as mere silliness (or moments of terror purposely masked by Cage's own hysterical melancholy), Loew's explosion finally introduces a sense of fright to the proceedings. Cage has suddenly become a terrifying on-off switch. His film-long build-up is no longer some cycle of weirdness, but has finally culminated in choppy mood swings that exude pure danger--the very final stage of this on-the-street insanity. Even previous outbursts were not quite as violent and abrupt; the actor's ferocity in battling himself translates as the final attempt from whatever sanity Loew has left (or whatever sanity he ever had in the first place) to deny him his self-contained forgiveness and peace of mind.

But Alva's brother, dramatically set up in the last few minutes of the film as some ever-approaching avenger/demon slayer, storms into his apartment as a whimpering Loew brings the "stake" to his chest; Emilio obliges and forces it in. At this point, Cage performs his final act of reining it in: after a brief, painful scream, he slowly brings his arms to his side, his final thoughts being of Rachel, begging that he dream of her. In other words, the asshole wins because we've taken him up on his fantasy. He had it comin', but we've all got it comin', kid--Loew has beaten the rap by dying on his own terms, successfully pleading "not guilty" to the crimes committed during his life by reason of supernatural monstrosity, and his mind has finally thrown up the white flag and forgiven him. Cage mentions that he didn't want Loew to go out quietly, and perhaps he doesn't--but Loew's death rattle is not exaggerated in any way, which emphasizes his mortality and drives the point home that this is an inappropriate end for such a horrible person. The dual expectation for more histrionics and some form of cosmic retribution leads to one inevitable, "unfair" conclusion: he should be going out in a much louder fashion.

The Beginning of a Screamin' Mad Odyssey

So I've been leaving a lot of "Drafts" across the THE FILM FREAK CENTRAL BLOG 's administrative pages lately, trying to cobble together some cohesive thoughts to instigate discussion. But I've come up flat in the last few months--a particularly messy endeavor was trying to form cohesive thoughts about "Final Fantasy VII" and its undeniable link to Vertigo. When I find the time, I'll probably just play through the game again and give it the old college try. Until then, however, allow me to announce my intention to embark on a self-reflective odyssey in the form of a short diatribe.

I just saw Southland Tales, shortly before the box office plans to perform its mercy killing. Long story short, it just strikes me as all so much non-directional bile. The problem isn't that it doesn't make sense, it's that everything's so freakin' clear in its complete and utter contempt for the movies, for the avant-garde, for art in general, for philosophy, for itself, for its audience, and for anything else that comes within fifty feet of it. After a lot of self-conscious blather vaguely related to philosophy, sex, media, politics, literature and poetry, its one ultimate truth seems to be that "no one rocks the cock like Krysta Now [a porn star/media darling played by Sarah Michelle Gellar]," apparently the coda for humanity at the apocalypse. Because those words come from a smarmy, omniscient voice at the tail end of a cocktail party, it might be seen as some hyper-absurdist satire if it weren't for another piece of omniscient narration (from none other than Mr. Dick-in-a-Box himself) that quotes from the final lines of The Hollow Men; "whimper" and "bang" switch places in such a way that seems to imply that even the bangs themselves are ultimately whimpers. "No one rocks the cock" becomes an entirely earnest statement--none of it matters, metaphors are useless, and everything is so fucking stupid, so why bother trying to figure anything out?

Southland Tales' greatest crime in this regard may be how its plot and cast contrivances (an awful, nonsensical script that serves as the figurative and literal stand-in for the film; hiring washed-up actors to play washed-up actors-turned-political activists) act as ironic-cum-nihilistic reflections on the accepted conventions of "art" and "indie" films (non sequitur and dreamlike scenarios; the tendency to cast unknowns and b-listers). In doing so, it ignores any other directions that these "genres" have taken, and boils "good" and "bad" to immutable, objective concepts--in this case, it only recognizes and defines "bad." Immerse yourself too deeply into those immutable, objective concepts and you won't be able to see anything beyond those strict parameters. Encompassing yourself in irony comes at a price, after all, and you can't help but think about how this mentality has already creeped into societal acceptance. How would a kid raised on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" respond to a film of dubious intentions like Red Dawn? Counting myself as a member of that misbegotten generation--and not having been old enough to care when the Soviet Union collapsed--well, I'm still not entirely sure. But after I saw Southland Tales, I started wondering if my own relationship to cinema was capable of that brand of reductive hostility, and I found a concept to discuss in my long and storied history with Nicolas Cage.

You may have guessed by my throwaway mention in the "Shark: Season One" review that I have a particular affinity for Cage's batshit-nuts performances--but ask any of my friends and they'll tell you that "Screamin' Mad" Nicolas Cage is a recurring topic of discussion and fairly reliable running gag. Dude screams, dude grimaces, dude is hilarious. I'm not sure where all of that started, precisely--might've been after The Wicker Man, when that out-of-context "comedy of the year" clipshow started circulating on YouTube; maybe it was when I saw his manic, arrested-development performance in Ghost Rider; or maybe it didn't really gain momentum until I found his Japanese pachinko commercials. I've long considered these examples as hilarious for essentially the same reasons and never thought twice about it--but, of course, Wicker Man was intended as a thriller and the commercials were meant to be silly and a little unhinged. Contemplating that clipshow, I'm forced to wonder if these (mis)interpretations have had an adverse effect on my ability to properly discern Cage as anything but some knowing/unknowing avatar of wackiness. The guy won an Oscar some twelve years ago, but it's a lot easier to just pigeonhole him as a pleasant nutjob and leave it at that. I watched Face/Off again recently, and man, Cage is just wonderful in it. But is my admiration just post-ironic hangover?


Another example: just about everyone I know died laughing when they saw Nic play Fu Manchu for Werewolf Women of the SS--despite the fact that we all knew that it was coming. Why did we think it was so funny? Because it was just another example of Cage's madness? Because he had found the perfect outlet for appeasing a projected image to the masses? For all intents and purposes, Cage is the halfway point of Grindhouse, smack dab between the tiring post-modern sarcasm (Planet Terror) and the genuine post-modern self-analysis (Death Proof)--and by the same token comes the uneasy task of categorizing and understanding Cage's craziest performances.

Trying to figure this man out, then, has challenged my critical faculties, and I need to step up to the plate. So over the next few weeks, I'll be watching some of Nic's films--Raising Arizona, Vampire's Kiss, It Could Happen to You, Leaving Las Vegas, Face/Off, Adaptation., Ghost Rider, and more--and discussing them here on the blog through the prism of his performances and his career as a whole. Stay tuned.