Interview:2020/10/20 “Cock!”: Nicolas Cage and Marilyn Manson in Conversation

“Cock!”: Nicolas Cage and Marilyn Manson in Conversation
Interview with Nicolas Cage
Date	October 20, 2020
Source	Interview Magazine
Interviewer	Marilyn Manson Photography: Torbjørn Rødland Stylist: Mel Ottenberg

Nicolas Cage needs to work, but not necessarily for the reasons you and I need to work. At 56, the owner of one of the most eclectic filmographies in Hollywood history just can’t seem to slow down. Arsenal, Vengeance: A Love Story, Inconceivable, Mom and Dad, The Humanity Bureau, Dark, Mandy, Looking Glass, 211, Between Worlds, A Score to Settle, Color Out of Space, Running with the Devil, Kill Chain, Primal, Grand Isle. All released within the last three years, all featuring Cage in try-anything mode. Whether he’s teetering on the verge of mania or whipping himself into a campy frenzy, Cage is acting with the abandon of someone who has nothing left to prove. With good reason.

A descendant of cinema royalty (his uncle is the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola), Cage forged a path in the mold of the larger-than-life movie stars he grew up watching. But where they may have zigged, Cage zagged: first as a chiseled teen heartthrob in ’80s fare including Valley Girl, Rumble Fish, and Peggy Sue Got Married; then as the wickedly charming lead in auteurist oddities such as the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona and David Lynch’s Wild at Heart; then as an Oscar winner for his role as an emotionally vacant alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas; then as an action star in blow- ’em-ups such as Con Air, The Rock, Face/Off, Gone in 60 Seconds, and National Treasure. And now, against the backdrop of his B-movie bonanza, he enters, well, his Nick Cage metaphase: as Joe Exotic, otherwise known as the Tiger King, in a new miniseries based on the incarcerated, heavy-drug-using, polyamorous big-cat owner made famous by Netflix, and as a cash-strapped version of himself in next year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. His days at the top of the box office largely behind him—he was once one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, earning $40 million in 2009— speculation about his career choices persist: Is he paying off debts? Is he supporting his taste for rare artifacts? Is he just bored? As he tells his friend, the musician Marilyn Manson, the answer is as complicated as it is simple.

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NICOLAS CAGE: I’m very excited that you’re interviewing me, especially since we’ve known each other for so many years.

MARILYN MANSON: The first time we met was nebulous, because we had several encounters. One of the most memorable encounters was when you bought my first painting at my first art show. You are a collector of many different things, art being one of them. We’ve talked about the living and dead creatures you’ve accumulated throughout your fascination with the unknown and things that are of unexplainable origin. Do you collect things as trophies, or is it something you connect with your childhood?

CAGE: Certainly not as trophies. It’s a way to get things to crack, to open my imagination. It’s been like that for a very long time. It happened just by watching episodes of Rod Serling’s [horror anthology series] Night Gallery. I think those were the beginnings of me trying to understand larger-than-life performance, because many of the actors in those shows were acting in a way that was not necessarily natural, but terrifying. Sometimes, if I don’t know how to play apart, I can refer to a Francis Bacon image, or I can read a bit of poetry, and it triggers something in my mind that creates a feeling, so that I don’t have to act. I think that’s what art, for me, is really about. Animals, too. That’s why I like to surround myself with reptiles and fish and cats. I just bought a crow. His name is Huginn, after one of [the Norse god] Odin’s two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, and he’s amazing.

MANSON: Is he a raven?

CAGE: No, he’s an African pied crow. He says “hi” when I walk into the room and “bye” when I leave. The other morning he started laughing and called me an asshole.

MANSON: You think he’s genuinely speaking to you?

CAGE: I think he is.

MANSON: I believe that about my animals, too, but more importantly, why did he call you an asshole?

CAGE: I’m trying to figure that one out. He likes to eat cat food, which makes it easy, because I give my cats Sheba Perfect Portions, and Huginn enjoys it as well. I think he has a sense of humor, so maybe that’s why he called me an asshole.

MANSON: [Laughs] It was a pleasant “asshole,” like we would say to each other as friends.

CAGE: What do you think I should teach him to say?

MANSON: I think you should teach him how to speak different languages.

CAGE: You don’t think I should teach him to say “cock”?

MANSON: [Laughs] I wasn’t going to bring that up, but people should know the context. I awoke to a series of performances you had recorded, a multi-universe of several different characters screaming “cock” in such a loud and dissonant way. I was literally just watching Mom and Dad, which, if people missed it, is a fantastic performance by you. It reminded me of your performances that you sent me where you yell “cock.” Is there anything that draws you to certain roles?

CAGE: It has to do with life experience. Do I have the emotional record or memories to inform the performance in a way that feels authentic? Mom and Dad was the blackest of comedies, and I relished the opportunity to recall my frustration with the damned “Hokey Pokey” song in the scene when I’m smashing the pool table with a sledgehammer while singing it. That was the song in kindergarten where the teachers would figure out who was coordinated and who wasn’t. I found that very insulting, so I put it into the movie. I went all the way back to kindergarten to find that anger.

MANSON: Let it be known that my favorite David Lynch film is Wild at Heart. Your character, Sailor Ripley, stands out to me. I would love to hear about the methodology of getting into that character, because it had such an impact on me. Tell me about that role, particularly the snakeskin jacket.

CAGE: I’m a Lynch enthusiast. I used to go to the Nuart Theatre with Crispin Glover and watch Eraserhead ad infinitum. When Wild at Heart came along, we started working together on it, and I was grabbing inspiration from all kinds of different places. I was walking down Melrose Avenue and I went into a secondhand clothing store called Aaardvark’s Odd Ark, and bought this snakeskin jacket, because I wanted to be like Marlon Brando in Sidney Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind. Then, in rehearsals, I had this epiphany. I was thinking about Andy Warhol, because I believe that what you can do in one art form, you can do in another. He took icons like Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley, and made collages out of them. I thought, “Why can’t you do that with a film performance?” And then I read the book An Actor Prepares by [Constantin] Stanislavski, and he said that the worst thing an actor can do is copy another actor. I thought it was a rule that should be broken in the spirit of creating a Warhol-like experience. I feel very lucky because David let me do it. And then I said, “I’m going to talk like Elvis Presley. I think Sailor has some sort of a connection with Elvis, and that may be the source power that moves him.” And then he said, “Okay, but you’re going to have to sing a couple of Elvis songs.” I’m not a singer, but I said I’d do it. It was my way of giving him Cage, Warhol, Presley, and Brando in one performance.

MANSON: The jacket becomes sort of a talisman for the character.

CAGE: Yeah. I gave it to Laura Dern at the end of the shoot. She has it somewhere in her closet.

MANSON: It seems to me that you will be remembered for your acting more than anything that’s tabloid-related, but let it be known that my first job was as a journalist. I was actually the first person to interview myself, and that’s partially why I had a pseudonym before I had a band. I had the name for a band, and then had to write music after people thought that I was something interesting, because I created a mythology and mystique around myself. I know that you believe strongly in mythology and keeping your private life separate from your acting, and you’ve done that very successfully. This leads me to a weirder question: How do you think social media affects art and artists?

CAGE: I’ve tried to stay away from it because I’m still a big believer in the mystique and the glamour of the Golden Age film stars. I think a mystique is still achievable, but I’m still forming my thoughts about it because I don’t really know how to answer it at the moment, except that I’m afraid of it and I don’t want any part of it. I do think at some point it’s going to have to be injected into film, because it’s such a massive part of society. It’s interesting you mentioned that your first job was as a journalist because I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. I was on the high school newspaper, and I enjoyed that. I liked being a newspaperman. I’m very taken by the power of journalism and the power of conversation. What we’re doing now is exciting.