The Telluride Film Festival held its traditional Labor Day picnic Monday afternoon at the park on the east end of town. Festival guest director Alexander Payne, producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, Jason Reitman and a multitude of film fans mingled on the lawn and then gathered for a panel that talked movies and motivation.

Among the gems at the panel -- which was hosted by IndieWire's Anne Thompson and featured Reitman, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" star Nicolas Cage, "Bright Star" actor Paul Schneider and "The Miscreants of Taliwood" director George Gittoes -- was this nugget.

When Schneider was struggling to answer the first question directed to him, Cage accidentally spilled his water down the front of the dais.

Reitman to Cage: "Did you really have to try and upstage Paul Schneider? You haven't done enough in your career?"

Cage: "I was trying to help him."

Schneider: "You helped me enough with 'Raising Arizona.' "

Schneider went on to complain about how horrible it is as an actor to be told to "relax" on set. "Never tell an actor to relax." Cage then related a set story of the notoriously combative Werner Herzog coming up to him, finger pointed, and saying, "Now you just relax!" Cage says he "went nuts" and left the set. Reitman then noted that he had just learned something important about dealing with actors.

Gittoes, who went to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and became involved in the nutty local film scene for his unique documentary, talked about "sending up" the Taliban and how surreal it was to shoot a scene with fake gunshots in the midst of constant real ones. Many of the local fighters stopped to watch the filming, fascinated.

Cage then cracked: "Did you tell the Taliban to relax?" He went on, "I think what you did is so brave. Next time you do something like that, please take me with you."

Gittoes responded: "That's a dangerous offer."

Cage also talked about how, since they were filming in New Orleans, he tried to bring a "jazz acting" style to his work on the film. Among his improvisations was a scene in which he suddenly holds a .44 Magnum to the head an old infirm woman, which he then had to convince Herzog to include in the final cut, saying merely: "That's Bad Lieutenant."

In the afternoon's biggest laugh, Cage responded to a question about when he knows that he's gone "too far," by saying, deadpan, "I don't really understand terms like 'over-the-top.' Over the top of what? Infinity?"