"I've always wanted to do work that's stimulating and exciting on an escapist level, but also to do movies that are a bitmore thoughtful and thought-provoking and poetic."
Coppola Movies
RUMBLE FISH (1983)
"(about the Coppolas) It's a family that's loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even."
THE COTTON CLUB (1984)
"I love Francis and his movies, I would have liked to have been in any of them."
"I didn't want to be Kathleen Turner's babe. I just wanted to play a character. So I thought, How can I make this guy really far out? I said, "I want to talk like Pokey." Because to me it was funny. And also, it was the way a lot of guys in high school sounded before their voice changed."
War: What Is It Good For?
BIRDY (1984)
"If Picasso could paint surreal, why couldn't actors try to achieve that as well."
LORD OF WAR (2005) [ Here's a movie that's mostly entertaining and insightful, if rather derivative - think "Goodfellas" meets "Syriana" meets Ordell Robie's AK-47 speech in "Jackie Brown". And while I like my Nic Cage, his character is kind of a blank and his relationships with model wife Bridget Moynahan, ****-up brother Jared Leto and ATF nemesis Ethan Hawke aren't very involving. Sorry, Jean Carlo. ]
"Sometimes when I'm working on a part, I'll do the exact opposite of Method acting. I'll read a line in the script and play with it vocally, externally - I'll try to find a melody or a rythm for it - and then, only after I've got that down will I go beyond the line and put in whatever other stuff it needs to make it come to life."
"I think he's in so much pain that he's decided no to feel any pain at all. It's an interesting irony to me because on the one hand, he's destroying himself. On the other hand, if it were not for this drinking, he would not have found what I consider to be true love."
"I've always been a victim of the over-the-top, grand romantic gesture. I've made a romantic fool of myself many, many times, by performing grand gestures when I'm not wanted."
"I wanted this guy not to be your typical image of a New York detective, with a cigarette and a leather jacket. I wanted him to be more of a bon vivant in attitude and attire. I fell in love with this rust colored suit, and I thought the Hawaiian shirt worked well with it. He's a man of questionable taste. "
"I wanted to work with Scorsese, and I felt that what paramedics do is so important to the community, and people don't really know what they do. When they get there, it's like, "You're late!" or "Couldn't you come any faster?" or "It's about time!" or "Don't take me to the hospital!" and all that. But Marty would say that they're saints. And I think it's important that people know what these people go through."
"It's a social comedy about important issues, contemporary issues. There was one night, very strange night, when the riots broke out in L.A, and we were in fact shooting riot scenes the same night. It was an odd, gloomy day. I thought, this is strange. Well I thought, well, you know, art imitates life. This is something, this is a reality."
TRAPPED IN PARADISE (1994) [ I've seen this a few years ago, I barely remember any of it... Robbers stuck in a small town on Xmas eve, one of them Cage and another Dana Carvey, right? Wasn't Jon Lovitz in this too? ]
"Action only gives you a certain amount of time to convey a point as an actor, so it teaches you to be succinct. The other thing I like about action is that it's pure cinema, an experience you can only get from the movies."
" I wanna take tired old action conventions and breathe a sense of being out of control into them. I wanted Castor Troy to have a more mod look than the usual way we see gangsters in movies, with that Armani suit. So at the start of the movie, I've got him carrying gold guns and wearing gold cuff links. He's sort of the Liberace of crime."
"Part of my drive as a young man was to do action. I've always been an action kind of guy, but no one saw me that way until Jerry Bruckhiemer came along. He had a vision. That's why I went back to work with him again."
"I knew it would be a challenge when I signed on for the part. If you can imagine playing one character with one mindset and getting that down, then changing clothes and trying to get into the mindset of the other brother, and then switching again."
THE WEATHERMAN (2005)
Directed by Nicolas Cage
SONNY (2002)
"I was very adrenalized by the experience. I was excited to be surrounded by so many creative people in all walks of the filmmaking process."
What-The-****? Trilogy
THE WICKER MAN (2006)
GHOST RIDER (2007)
BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL - NEW ORLEANS (2009)
Sci-Fi
NEXT (2007)
KNOWING (2009)
Next
SEASONS OF THE WITCH (2010) KICK-ASS (2010) THE HUNGRY RABBIT JUMPS (2010) THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE (2010)