Nicolas Cage’s interest in the occult made ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ appear

By ROB LOWMAN

Los Angeles Daily News

Published: Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 10:38 a.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 10:38 a.m.

LOS ANGELES — Everyone wants a little magic in their lives, and Nicolas Cage is no different. That’s why he came up with the idea of making a family film based on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia.”

The Oscar winner has always had a fascination with the occult, using the original meaning of the word — hidden. He’s not sure where his interest in magic and acting began, but believes it goes back to when his father, August Coppola, built him a wooden castle in the backyard when he was very young.

“I would play in the castle and imagine different things. At that age, the castle was a symbol of the imagination for me,” says the goateed 46-year-old actor, smiling as he remembers.

His father — the brother of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire — died in October at 75. He was a professor of literature and philosophy and dean of creative arts at San Francisco State University.

From those early days playing in the castle, Cage became interested in mythology, particularly Arthurian legends and Grail stories. Over the years the actor has looked for movies that relate. He was searching for such a movie when he and producing partner Todd Garner hit upon the idea for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which opens Wednesday. They commissioned a script and then took it to uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with whom Cage had already made six films.

“Jerry wanted to do it right away, which was very exciting for us,” Cage says. “He brought in his team, they started adding even more levels, and it came to life. It was a lot of work, but I knew Jerry’s group could do that — put it on a fast track to make sure it connects.”

Jon Turteltaub, whose previous two films were the “National Treasure” duo starring Cage and produced by Bruckheimer, was brought in to direct. Turteltaub is also an old friend of Cage, having gone to Beverly Hills High School with him when the actor was known as Nic Coppola.

“First of all, let it be known that Jon is a really, really good actor,” Cage says. “We both auditioned for the lead in ‘Our Town,’ and he beat me out. I got to play Constable Warren, which was two lines of dialogue, and he will never let me forget it.”

Now making his third film in a row with Cage, Turteltaub jokes that he doesn’t remember what it’s like to work with somebody else. But he stresses that despite Cage’s reputation, the actor is easy to work with.

“Aside from being very much of a gentleman,” says the director of hits like “Phenomenon” and “The Kid,” “he’s extremely professional, takes his work very seriously. And for somebody who has a reputation of being crazy or a wild man, he’s definitely not crazy and he’s certainly not wild. He’s always the first actor there, on time and knows his lines. ... I think that surprised people.”

But Cage does bring other surprises to the set, the director says, in the way he plays a character.

“Whatever you had in mind the night before reading the script will sort of be there, but then it will also be Nic’s part ... often amazingly brilliant and that’s what makes the movie a little sparkly, a little bit better.”

Turteltaub says he didn’t know back in high school that Cage would be destined for greater things. He remembers saying to a friend back then that because everything was “so introverted and internal,” he couldn’t tell whether Cage was “the best or worst actor in the school.”

Looking back, the director believes that Cage was “exploring that bold expedition he keeps going on when he performs.”

“This is why he’s such a great movie actor,” Turteltaub adds. “He goes deep into his character and finds those little crazy things and commits to them deeply. In high school there is not a lot of opportunity for that when you’re in ‘Oklahoma!’”

When they were developing “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the pair found themselves back in Beverly Hills High School watching Cage’s oldest son perform in the drama department’s production of “Inherit the Wind.” “Things have come full circle,” notes Cage, who always seems to be looking for connections.

In “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” he found some. There is a car chase scene — this, after all, is a Jerry Bruckheimer film — using a reproduction of a 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom. Cage mentions he once owned one. He appears to have sold it before his current well-documented financial woes and reports of excessive spending, which he won’t talk about because of legal issues. (He is suing his former manager, while on the end of a number of countersuits and is still paying the IRS back taxes.)

But what Cage finds interesting is that the classic auto’s engine was named the Merlin. In “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Cage plays Balthazar, once a disciple of the legendary magician, who has returned to present-day New York City to train a young man (Jay Baruchel) who has inherited the powers of Merlin in order to battle followers of his archenemy, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina).

“I love the idea that the Rolls-Royce’s engine was called Merlin because without that engine in the (British) Spitfire and the (American P-51) Mustang fighter planes we’d all be speaking German right now,” Cage says. “So, to me it was fascinating for the story that the Merlineans were behind the scenes at all times trying to stop negative forces from dominating the world.”

The actor says he ping-pongs in his reading, which is mostly philosophy and history. “I’ll find a book and think, ‘that’s interesting,’ and then I’ll find another book that will connect with that.”

Cage also likes to take trips to historic places to try to soak up the atmosphere and with “a bit of imagination” find if anything stimulates his thinking to come up with an idea for a movie.

For “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” he visited Stonehenge and took the room in a New York City hotel where scientist Nikola Tesla lived.

Inventions by the father of alternating current figure prominently in the film. Cage also went to see Merlin’s Cave below Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, England.

“It was interesting because as I went through that day the waves were crashing against the rocks, and it gets kind of spooky. ... And as I was coming back out, it almost sounded like I could hear my name. The hair on my skin was raising up, and I thought, ‘I could use this,’” he says, smiling.

Other things come round, too. Part of Cage’s recent commitment to family films has to do with his father.

“It’s more of an epiphany for me,” says the actor, who still loves what he calls midnight movies and intense dramas. “I knew I had this baggage of celebrity on me. I wanted to do something positive with it instead of just sit around and constantly get hit with it.”

Cage — who donated $1 million to the Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina and $2 million to Amnesty International — calls his father the “sorcerer in my life.”

“He really wanted me to get involved. He didn’t care about money; he was an educator. He wanted to open people’s minds. I made a decision at some point that I had to pick something that I cared about, and it was children,” Cage says.

“The social worker in me thinks that world peace begins at home. In my own little way, if I can get families to be excited about sharing something ... that’s my little way of trying to merge my profession with my social interest.”