Nicolas Cage has said he finds the “Cage Rage” internet memes about him “frustrating”.
The “Cage Rage” trend sees the actor’s more outlandish performances cut down to either a single screenshot or a compilation, which he says unfairly reduces the artistry behind the films he stars in.
Speaking to Indiewire while promoting his latest movie, Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, which sees Cage play a man seeking revenge on a satanic cult, he said: “The issue is, with the advent of the internet, doing these mashups, where they pull these choice moments without the context of the whole film around it to support it, has created this meme-ification, if you will.”
“It’s been branded ‘Cage Rage’, and it’s frustrating. I’m sure it’s frustrating for Panos, who has made what I consider a very lyrical, internal, and poetic work of art, to have this ‘Cage Rage’ thing slammed all over his movie. It’s one thing for me, because I’d like to think I could continue to work with Panos, but the internet has kind of done the movie a disservice.”
Cage, however, did admit that he’s deliberately taken on certain roles to realise “my abstract and more ontological fantasies with film performance, by playing people who were crazy, or by playing people who were on drugs, or supernaturally possessed — so that I have the license, if you will, to explore the German Expressionistic style of acting, or the Western kabuki. Whatever you want to call it.”
"I had to find some sort of engine to attach it to, so it could coalesce, and gel, in some way," he continued. "I chose to play Peter Loew [in Vampire’s Kiss], the literary agent who was losing his mind, to think he was Nosferatu so I could channel some Max Schreck–like acting. I chose Terence in Bad Lieutenant, who was high on coke, to be able to use drugs — not literally — so I can add more James Cagney into it. There’s always some sort of a reason you can attach to it. It’s all very thought out and carefully planned.”
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