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icolas Cage is a man of extremes. He was married to the daughter of Elvis and named his second son Kal-El, aka Superman. He owned haunted houses and was haunted for real by the taxman. First and foremost he has played characters of a variety and manic energy that most of his colleagues shy away from – angels and alcoholics, sorcerers and soldiers, for which he garnered awards, including an Oscar, and scathing reviews, and became of the object of sneers and cultish reverence. These contradictions notwithstanding, he comes across as a man in harmony with himself and also a proficient teller of tales – about the alien creature that grew into Nicolas Cage.
the red bulletin: Do you think about death? nicolas cage: It is wise to think about death from time to time. I am working on my natural fear of death, because it is a better way of life not to harbour such feelings. And I am by no means a master of that. But I am definitely in no rush to leave. So why did you pick up a cottonmouth viper with bare hands, when filming your most recent movie Joe? Its poison is potentially lethal. Because it relaxes me. Couldn’t you think of a less suicidal method? I discovered doing adventure films that one of the things that relaxes me is stunts. When I drive a car at 100mph and dodge other cars and try to not hit the wall, it’s like a meditation. Also I am one of those people, the more coffee I drink the more relaxed I am. Now that day on Joe, I was filming a very complicated scene, and my adrenalin was going in the wrong direction. So I asked director David Gordon Green would he mind if I picked up the snake. He said: “You have to promise me you’re not going to die. Otherwise I’ll look like a real jackass.” And I said: “I promise you and I will finish the scene.” the red bulletin
So when I took the snake, it was more about the surfing of the adrenalin, so I could get control of my own anxiety in order to play the scene – and in the end I gently tossed it into the grass and said, “Don’t kill it, it’s a friend of mine.” Why aren’t you scared in such situations? There is always an element of fear, but it is the fear itself that makes me want to face it. Because I have to break its power, which means I have to immerse myself in that very thing that scares me so it loses its hold over me. It sounds as if you have had other hair-raising encounters like this? That’s right. Some years ago I went diving in a shark cage in South Africa to confront a great white, because that was one of my most primal fears. It wound up being a remarkably calm, gorgeous experience. There was this massive shark staring at me and I felt a strange connection with this awesome animal. Or I also went to the swampland in New Orleans, where I used to live. There was this 800-pound alligator. I saw him from the surface of the water looking up at me, he looked like a dinosaur. What did you do? I fed him marshmallows. They like that. Perhaps the profession of an adventurer would be more appropriate. In fact, I made the contract with myself when I was 16 that if acting didn’t work out, I was going to become a fisherman or merchant mariner. My first love is the ocean. I feel there is an almost indescribable calm that comes over me when I’m near the water, where I can actually feel every cell in my body relaxing. But you seem quite relaxed now. Because with acting I found an outlet for the energy and passion in me – and at one time anger. Without it I might have made mistakes that would have been irreversible. I could have gone in the wrong direction. Why anger? I wasn’t popular at school, and that was painful. Because I wasn’t able to connect with people. I can remember being shocked when I would come back as a child from the doctor’s office that I had normal organs and that I had a normal skeleton. Because I was certain on some level at that age that I was from somewhere else. And my father once said literally that he felt I was the only son that he had to introduce himself to. Because he thought I was an alien, whatever that meant. But I always had 41