BOP Interview: Nicolas Cage
Also: Tye Sheridan and David Gordon Green
By Ryan Mazie
April 11, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
“I’ve experimented with abstract [performance styles], what I call ‘Western kabuki’,” said Cage during our interview for Joe. “I was at this point where I just wanted to find a part where I didn’t design the performance, but I just felt it and could be it. Whatever the mistakes I’ve made in the past, which I won’t go into detail with, I wanted to put them into a character, a portrayal of understanding, and use the mistakes in a way I wouldn’t have to act so much.”
The veteran actor stars as the titular rugged character whose mouth opens up more often for a swig of liquor than to spout out words. An ex-con who is trying to stay on the straight and narrow by running a tree poisoning business, Joe takes an unlikely mentorship to a 15-year-old boy (Mud’s Tye Sheridan) who has the burden of an alcoholic and abusive father. The two are faced with the choice of redemption or vengeance, with the tension coming from the impending sense of dread that one of the characters will finally explode after hitting his boiling point.
In an interview with Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan and director David Gordon Green, the three talked about on set improvisation, capturing authenticity, working in the woods, Bruce Lee, and Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream.
Mr. Cage, you have experimented with film acting in the past and went more surrealistic and operatic, versus a film like Joe and Frozen Ground that is more photorealistic and natural. How do you decide which stylistic direction will shape your performance?
Nicolas Cage: It’s the material and where I am at in my life. There has to be a mechanism in the script to go that “Western Kabuki” or “Baroque” way where it still connects with the audience in a contemporary environment. Silent film actors from the ‘20s or German impressionistic actors like Max Schreck, it was a part of their style back then. So I was trying to figure out how to bring that back into contemporary cinema and the way to do it is to find someone who is either A) going nuts like Peter Loew in Vampire’s Kiss, B) he’s on crack like Terence McDonagh in Bad Lieutenant, or C) he’s sold his soul to the devil and now his head goes on fire into a skull in black leather. So those were all fun ways to have it connect with a modern audience. But when I got around to Joe, and also Frozen Ground, I just wanted to infuse the vessel of the character with my memories and my life experience and not design a performance from the outside in. You can go as big as you want as long as it has emotional content. I always say, “Well, if you think it is over the top, then tell me where the top is.” I don’t think anyone can, but if you can tell me where the top is, then I will tell you if I’m over it.
David, you encouraged the script to be more of a guideline so your actors could improvise on set. Can you elaborate a bit about that?
David Gordon Green: The beauty of this project is that we have a great novel as a guideline and resource with volumes of interior monologue and subtext that we could use as an emotional archive. We had a great screenplay by Gary Hawkins, one of my college professors, who had known Larry Brown very intimately and made a documentary of his life. So when it came down to the production of the film and to define the faces and voices of the characters who have been on the page all of these years, I find it my job to make that transition an organic one. Not only understand where those people are coming from and memorize lines, but bring themselves and their own emotional honesty, which often leads to an improvised process. Nic and Tye would tell stories and I would keep a notebook of it. Also casting a lot of the supporting actors, who were non-traditional, they wouldn’t read the script, but I talked them through who their character was about and I’d let them use their own authenticity and instincts.
NC: It was a very pleasant and playful experience. One of the things I loved about working with David is that he would get the scene the way it was written, but then he would go back and say, “Let’s do it with no dialogue to see how you can tell it through your face,” and then he’d shoot another take improvised, so it was a process of discovery. When you have that kind of environment on the set, spontaneous things happen that makes it become electric and fresh.
Tye Sheridan: David has a sensibility where he can tell when his characters become bogged down, so he’d say, “Let’s improvise and play around to lighten the mood and reenergize,” and not a lot of directors have that talent.
I love the authentic look and feel of the characters. What was it like capturing that authenticity on film and is it easier or harder these days to capture that authenticity?
DGG: We live in a world of reality television so it’s less surprising to see a camera on a street corner. I like that the production element can be that much more intimate, because the mystery has been dissolved a little bit. When I was a kid, I watched the behind-the-scenes making of documentary to a movie and it would blow my mind learning the art form behind the magic of it, but now I think everyone has a good, clear concept of it, so there’s not that obsession with that. It’s also a world where people know where the lines of documentary, reality TV, and fiction narrative filmmaking are starting to blur and there’s a lot of value there. You see a movie like Grizzly Man, and if only I could take Timothy Treadwell and I could make an amazing script for him… I think in that way it has become a lot easier. Trying to get a movie that emotionally connects with an audience and invites them into a world that does take you to difficult places and has enough emotional honesty and levity to make that something you want to look at, but with an attractive element to the cinematography and music that brings you in and makes you feel fulfilled. All of these technical elements that make it a rewarding experience and not just the dramatic hammer coming down.
David and Nic, you have both mainstream and independent projects under your belts. What is it like working outside of the studio system and the restraints and liberations it brings?
DGG: Every new project I do is a reinvention of myself and it reinvigorates me as to why I love the industry. The difficulties to filmmaking can be infinite. It can be trying to raise money for a passion project that has no name actors and no high concept. It can also be frustrating when you have all of the money at your fingertips and you made your dream production, but the machines of marketing start swirling that make decisions on things that you thought you had control over, but don’t. But then there’s the enjoyment of seeing a line down the block to see a movie you worked really hard on. So you always have to balance the frustrations of making those movies that get your heart beating. And sometimes its seeing an audience engaged that’s really satisfying.
NC: I have to agree. I think that Joe is unique and original and David’s vision. I haven’t seen another movie quite like it. But if you look carefully at my filmography, then in between the adventure films you will see that there has been a Bad Lieutenant or World Trade Center or Lord of War or Matchstick Men. I want to keep it eclectic. I see myself as a student. I will never call myself a master or a maestro. If you take the path of the student, that means you have try to learn a bit of everything to learn something and strike some kind of new note or sound or expression in the process. I’m not going for grades; I’m going for an education. That means I’m going to continue experimenting and trying new things to evolve and learn.
David, your last two films have been set in the woods. What are some of the challenges of filming that way?
DGG: I love the uncertainty of working with nature, animals, and kids. I like to bring on the elements, I say. Shooting outside there are challenges [with lighting], but those are inconsequential. I love the idea of being out in the woods with my buddies, working hard to make movies and creative opportunities with beautiful backdrops. I look forward to climbing to the top of a mountain and shooting. If anything depresses me, it is finding out that I’m shooting on a soundstage on a constructed set that’s been idealized by all the department heads. I like to think, “We will show up before the sun rises and put everything together in the dark, and as soon as it’s ready with enough light in the sky, we will get shooting until the sun goes down.”
As you said earlier, the script has some improvisation in it and being based off of a book, you can’t fit everything into a film. How often did the “blueprint” you have change throughout the process?
NC: Last night we had a screening and someone asked a question if there was anything in the book, not in the script, that I put back into it, but I didn’t answer it. This morning I told David I didn’t answer it, because my answer was all about Häagen-Dazs and Bruce Lee. And David said, “Now I want to really hear it,” so now here I go (laughs).
So in the book, Larry Brown has this very beautiful described scene where Joe is pulling buckshot out of his shoulder, because he gets shot in it. It’s beautifully described. I said that we should put that scene back into the script, because it wasn’t in it initially. I thought it spoke volumes about the character. Now here we go to Häagen-Dazs and Bruce Lee. My father came home with a carton of Häagen-Dazs. It was the first time it came out. He said, “Everyone says it’s the best ice cream in the world. I bought the vanilla one, because I want you to know, without the complexity of other flavors; if they have achieved the simplest flavor and you can compare it to other ice creams that are also vanilla, so you can truly know if this is the best ice cream in the world.” So we tried the vanilla and I was like, “Wow! That’s the best vanilla I’ve ever had.”
Then my father took me to see Return of the Dragon with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. It was the last fight scene in the movie in the coliseum and Bruce Lee broke Chuck Norris’s arm. Chuck Norris was in extraordinary pain. Pain is something we all have seen and experienced, so you know when someone is faking it or lying about it. So pain, out of all of the emotions to portray, is the vanilla. My father looked at me and said, “You really feel the pain in his performance,” and I took it in that I do. So I said, “Let’s put in the scene where Joe is pulling the buckshot out so I can portray the pain, in such a way that it’s the vanilla, so people know that I’m really feeling it and am very committed to it.” So there’s my Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Larry Brown, Joe, David Gordon Green story.