If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve seen a Nicolas Cage meme. Perhaps you’re a connoisseur of vintage classics, like his sarcastic “You Don’t Say?” face from Vampire’s Kiss. Or maybe you’re better acquainted with recent hits, like his car scene with Pedro Pascal in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Either way, something about Cage’s larger-than-life performances has captured the undying love and attention of the internet. And for Cage himself, that proves to be more of a curse than a blessing.
In a video interview with Mashable, Cage recalled one of the first memes he’d seen about himself: a compilation titled “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.” (It’s exactly what it sounds like.)
“I saw this video online that had cobbled together all these freak-out moments in movies where I’m having a meltdown, without any regard for act one or act two or how the character got to that level of crisis,” said Cage. “And it started going viral around the world.”
He continued: “That was not why I signed up to become a film actor. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to make movies. [The memes] were frustrating because I had no control over them, but it was stimulating because I thought maybe someone will see [them] and check out the movies and find out how the character got there. Maybe that’s the silver lining.”
This year, a new silver lining to Cage’s viral notoriety emerged in the form of the film Dream Scenario. Cage plays mild-mannered family man Paul Matthews, who begins popping up in people’s dreams without any warning or explanation. He soon becomes an internet sensation in his own right, leading him to reckon with the highs and lows of fame. In many ways, Paul is a mirror to Cage, or to anyone who’s gone viral and had their self-image flattened into one specific meme.
Dream Scenario is the second film in two years that sees Cage reckoning with aspect of his image as an actor. The first was The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a comedy which sees him playing himself. That film was originally written for him, while Dream Scenario was initially meant to star Adam Sandler as Paul. But when Cage came on board, the film took on a new, more meta meaning.
Nicolas Cage in “Dream Scenario.”
Credit: A24
“It was very interesting to see a story about a persona that lives in the culture [that] takes on a life of its own,” Dream Scenario director Kristoffer Borgli told Mashable in an interview. “That has happened to Nicolas Cage, too, so it added another layer to the movie of thinking about his place in our culture. I mean, how many dreams has he appeared in already?”
The project offered Cage some catharsis, and a way to channel his own feelings about memes into art. “[Virality] was something of a weight. And I said, ‘What am I going to do with all this lead?'” Cage said. “And then I read the script for Dream Scenario, and I go, ‘That’s it. I’m going to put those feelings right into Paul.'”
“That was sort of the first conversation we had,” Borgli explained. “He was like, ‘I’ve been this guy. This has happened to me plenty of times.'”
“It was something that I could respond to, because yes, I thought I had the life experience to tell Paul’s story with as little acting as possible,” Cage said of reading the script. “There was authentic emotion and genuine connection to what he was going through.”
Take the scene in which Paul makes an ill-advised apology video addressing heinous actions committed by his dream selves. “With the apology video — I meant it, man,” Cage said. “That was me talking to all the stuff, like Picolas Cage, ‘You Don’t Say,’ all of that is there. And now I can turn it into a little bit of gold.
“I couldn’t get it if I had not gone through that experience,” Cage continued. “I would not have been able to play this character authentically.”
Dream Scenario is now in theaters.
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Film