Nicolas Cage

Valley Girl

Mandy

Well, hello there, dear readers! I hope you’re doing well and settling into September soundly enough. I was personally having a just-fine September, gearing up for spooky season, when the spookiest thing of all happened: I got COVID. This is my first time getting COVID (not very en vogue, I know) and I can safely say: it sucks. However, I feel very fortunate to be vaxxed, boosted, and continuously-masked because there are still people out there raw-dogging the elements without vaccinations or masks and one of them got my hypochondriadic ass sick but I digress. In my Paxlovid delirium, I cooked up a truly unhinged double feature that is worthy of your watch for a sick day or a normal one—a set of films featuring star-making performances from legendary actor Nicolas Cage. He’s the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, the once-husband of Patricia Arquette and Lisa Marie Presley, and, in addition to being one of America’s nepo baby national treasures, he is an iconic performer. I say performer and not actor because he invokes something that goes beyond the realm of acting abilities. He’s considered a bad actor by some, but much like Keanu Reeves, this has only added to his intrigue and charisma. As ridiculous as he can be, both on screen and off, Nicolas Cage and his Napoleon Dynamite voice are beloved by many, or at least, amused by many. Like Keanu Reeves, I also believe there is more to this man than just a breathy voice and a lot of passion, but even if there isn’t, Nic Cage tends to always put on a memorable, magical show. I was completely blown away by his performance in Adaptation (which earned him an Oscar nom) and film buffs still rave about his powerful turn in Leaving Las Vegas (which earned him an Oscar win.) More than an actor or performer or serial-husband, Nic Cage is a clear lover of cinema, and for that reason especially, I’ll always admire him. As a kid Cage was inspired by James Dean in East of Eden, and at fifteen, he allegedly tried to convince his uncle Francis to give him a screen test which was met with “silence in the car”. But being the nepo baby that could, Cage snagged a role in a TV pilot called The Best of Times that never aired, and eventually was cast in a very small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High where behind the scenes, his costars would allegedly quote Francis Ford Coppola movies at him mercilessly. This prompted him to start going by Nicolas Cage—a name inspired by the Marvel comic superhero Luke Cage and composer John Cage (the duality of man.) The following year, Nic Cage would finally land a starring role in a movie—tonight’s first film, Martha Coolidge’s 1983 cult-classic Valley Girl. The level of “cult” and “classic” that this film reaches is up for debate, but there’s no denying this film’s impact upon the star-crossed teen rom-com movies that followed. Based extremely-loosely on Romeo and Juliet, Valley Girl follows Julie (Deborah Foreman) as the titular valley girl who finds romance and excitement in a young punk named Randy, played by the man of the evening. From the moment this movie began with its iconically pink font in its title sequence, I knew that Valley Girl—no matter how dumb—would be for me. And I was correct. Julie is one of the most popular girls in school, dating one of the most popular boys, Tommy, even though he secretly hooks up with one of her besties at a party one night (a detail that is appallingly not a major part of the story and is never mentioned to Julie…) Julie’s feeling lukewarm about her jock bf and meets Randy just in time. He first sees her at the beach, then overhears her friend telling another friend about a party in the valley—an opportunity that Randy and his bestie Fred jump on, despite being from the bad part of town (Hollywood, lol.) When Randy and Fred arrive at the party, clad in dyed hair and spiky vests, they stick out like sore thumbs. But Julie doesn’t seem to mind, in fact she seems quite intrigued by Randy’s lack of bougie style and self-importance. He wears black jeans, she wears polo shirts—how will these two desperately-disparate teens possibly make it work?? You’ll have to watch Valley Girl for yourself to find out, but, spoiler alert: it is all very silly, very dumb, and very valley girlish. I really appreciated this film’s commitment to its aesthetic, and its unintentional stuck-in-timeness. Valley Girl really tried to create a clear distinction between the popped-collar preppy kids and the scabby lil punk kids but one of the funniest parts of this movie is how both “worlds” seemingly played the same kind of music, and partied the exact same way. I’m not sure how funny this film was actually meant to be, but does that really matter if I had a good time anyway? There are also a handful of side stories in this film that were fairly interesting but were not paid nearly enough attention in the end, including but not limited to, one of Julie’s friend’s moms trying to hook up with a classmate of theirs, and Julie’s fun-loving hippie parents and all of their meandering scenes spent reminiscing. The script—which was written in ten days (and it shows)—is doused in delightful dipshittery and innocent vapidity. As bad as these kids thought they were, their love affairs and shit-talking and party-fights are downright wholesome compared to the teen debauchery of the films that followed. I was, of course, obsessed with the 1980s jargon, the phenomenal soundtrack, and I was pleasantly surprised by Julie and Randy’s chemistry—which stemmed from the fact that that these two had a fling while filming. And young, sweet Nicolas Cage was adorable, and playing my favorite type of role of his: a loser. This worked so well in Adaptation and When Peggy Sue Got Married (one of the only Coppola films he was granted access into) and I’m not saying Nic Cage plays uncool better than he plays cool but it just feels more… authentic—which I say as a true fan! Even though he was playing the outcast, his trippindicular charm and whimsy and loose-grip on acting fit in perfectly here. With its neon LA lights and intoxicating inaneness, Valley Girl was kind of a fever dream about nothing, but one that I did enjoy. Speaking of fever dreams, let’s move on to the next film of the night. After his big break, Nic Cage would star as a lovable goofball in several iconic movies like Raising Arizona (my favorite Coen brothers film), Moonstruck (which was beloved by critics), and Vampire’s Kiss (which didn’t gain appreciation until decades after it was released.) This was the beginning of Nic Cage’s flop era—a time in which virtually none of his films were a success, and the meme-ification and jokes surrounding his performances were abound. But once Cage starred as a non-goofy, deeply-depressed man in Leaving Las Vegas, audiences got to see more of his range, and thus his scope of roles expanded. And yet, Nic Cage would almost exclusively star in action movies from this point on. These are the Nic Cage movies that I grew up on, and they all run the gamut between shockingly bad (Ghost Rider) and shockingly good (National Treasure.) But through all of these films, Cage showed consistent commitment to his craft, and proved himself to not be above any role, in any movie. He also learned to poke fun at himself, by making a hilariously memorable cameo on SNL, and by recently starring in the meta-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he plays himself. Having earned his spot as a Hollywood institution and a committed appreciator of movies both good and bad, Nicolas Cage started to get intentionally weird with it—like his turn in tonight’s second feature, Panos Cosmatos’ Not-Rated 2018 film Mandy. There are so many Nicolas Cage movies that I want to see that I contemplated doing a Nic Cage Quadruple Feature but I instead opted for a film high on my watchlist, a film that the man himself cites as one of his favorite projects. Mandy was released 5 years ago yesterday, it is randomly produced by Elijah Wood, and it begins with a quote that reads: “When I die bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, wrap some headphones around my head, and rock and roll me when I’m dead” It turns out that these were the eerie last words of Douglas Roberts, a man convicted of kidnapping and killing a man in Huntsville, Texas. But upon further research, I found that this wasn’t an original quote of Roberts’, but a take on a quote from an article in a Hope College newspaper, The Anchor, published in April 1988. The article was regarding a student’s Grateful Dead concert experience, and closed with the reporter quoting a random dude in the parking lot who gave that as his comment. I thought this was a pretty wild web of a fun fact, but Mandy is a pretty wild web all on its own. Set in the 1980s Pacific Northwest, Mandy follows a man named Red and his girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), who live a peaceful life in their Pinterest-worthy cabin in the woods. By day he chops down trees and by night he admires Mandy’s drawings and insights about space, which cause him to say things like “that’s wow”. Their love seemed too sweet, too innocent, and too quiet for it to last too long, and I was correct in my suspicions. Not too long after we’re introduced to this blissful couple, a psycho band of religious cultists and their spiky demon biker gang of henchmen arrive on their doorstep. The entire film is an acid-soaked odyssey of varying odiousness, but this is where things really take a turn for the trippy. It was at times hard to say what was real and what wasn’t in this movie, but this was one of those rare times where I was unbothered by this fact. The way Mandy distorts itself, narratively and visually, was consistently entertaining and unpredictable. And while I’ve seen many a revenge film, I’d never before seen Nic Cage in a revenge film—and this makes a difference. There is a moment in this film where he transforms from quiet mountain boyfriend to a desperate, rage-filled, killing machine, and while it features the trademark Nic Cage screech, it feels very believable. The hallucinogenic aesthetic of this film could be deemed slightly-distracting but I found its red-tinted, highly-contrasted cinematography to be surprisingly captivating (albeit unsafe for those who are sensitive to flashing lights.) The carnage was earned, the blood was bountiful, the kills were creative, and Nicolas Cage gives a performance that will remind you that he is an Oscar-winner. Mandy is a vicious, weirdly kinky, steadily disorienting ride that never ceases once it begins. It didn’t always make sense and it did not need to be 2 hours long but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Mandy—despite my or perhaps because of my sickly psychosis. Thanks for coming along for the wild ride this week, dear readers, I hope these movies made you appreciate Nicolas Cage more. I hope it highlighted the extent of this man’s range, or at least, what he’s willing to do for the gals he loves on screen. To quote Valley Girl, “he’s got the bod but his brains are bad news” and that’s exactly how I like my leading men. He’s lived a thousand lives and now he’s made his mark on yet another movie relic, this humble blog of mine. Talk to you next week, fellow Cage-heads.