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Nicolas Cage On Ghost Rider, Comics, Stunts & Voodoo

Features

A report from the Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance press conference.

With Nicolas Cage being one of the most fascinating characters left in Hollywood, DIY was thrilled to attend a press conference with the actor while he was in London recently.

Cage was in town to promote Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a sequel to the 2007 adaptation of the Marvel Comics character. He returns as Johnny Blaze, the stunt motorcyclist who sold his soul to the Devil and transforms into the vigilante Ghost Rider.

In this sequel, from Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Cage is joined by Idris Elba as a badass priest, Violante Placido as the mother of the child Blaze must rescue, and Johnny Whitworth as the villain. Ciarán Hinds and Christopher Lambert co-star.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is released in UK cinemas 17th February, which is when we can bring you our review.

In the meantime, enjoy the wise words of the eccentric, charismatic Cage, and picture the three cans of Red Bull he has in front of him. Scroll to the bottom to see a selection of Ghost Rider featurettes, including Filmbeat's interview.

You got to play both Johnny Blaze and the Ghost Rider this time around - did that appeal to you?
Yes, that was an opportunity to experiment with movement and with my state of mind to really believe I was this character. It was actually Brian Taylor that had the idea for me to do that, he was a big advocate of that. We were in New Orleans at the time, and the first thing I said was 'can I wear a mask?' so I wouldn't feel totally ridiculous as I walked on set to play this part. But there was also a writer called Brian Bates, who wrote the book 'The Way of Wyrd', and also 'The Way of the Actor'. In that book he put forth the notion that all actors, whether they know it or not, come from a long distant past of medicine men and shaman, and what these shaman would do is go into an altered state of consciousness to try to find answers and solutions to give to the village people. And in this day and age this person would be considered psychotic. When you think about it, it was a way of channeling the imagination to talk with spirits to get answers to the village. So they would wear masks, they would gather objects that had magical relevance. So I thought 'I'm dealing with a supernatural character, so why don't I try some of that?' So I would paint my face with black and white make-up so it looked like a skull, so it looked like some Afro-Caribbean voodoo icon or a New Orleanean voodoo icon by the name of Baron Samedi, or Baron Saturday, who looks like a skeleton but very finely dressed. He's the spirit of death but he's also the spirit that loves children, he's a very lusty voodoo icon. And I would paint my face and put black contact lenses in my eyes so that it looked more like a skull, and you couldn't see any pupils or whites of the eyes. I would sew Ancient Egyptian artefacts into my costume and got some rocks that had alleged frequencies, and who knows if it works or not. The point is it stimulated my imagination to think I really was this character. So I would walk onto set projecting an aura of horror and I would see fear in the eyes of my co-stars - it was like oxygen to a fire and that led me to believe that I really was this spirit of vengeance. The problem is, if you have a Christmas party in Romania and you're shooting until two in the morning and you're invited to the Christmas party and some schnapps is involved and you're still in character, all hell can break loose and it did! I'm lucky I'm not in some Romanian prison.

What about your body language?
I remember cobra snakes, cause at one point in my neighbourhood I had a couple of them. Then the neighbours didn't like it so I gave them to a zoo. But I would study these cobras and what they would do is move back and forth in a rhythmic motion and on the back of the snake was the pattern of an eye, like an occult eye, and it would try to hypnotise me and when it felt it had hypnotised me, it would strike. So I thought 'why doesn't the Ghost Rider move like that, with that sort of hypnotic, rhythmic motion?' And then there was something else I saw in a Trent Reznor video, where he was levitating and revolving in circles, so I said 'why don't we have the Ghost Rider levitate and revolve in circles'. We called it "the compass" where he would find his next victim and then attack. So a lot of thought went into it and a lot of imagination and improvisation; sometimes I would talk in what I thought was a Norse dialogue or some sort of Enochian angel speak or something... who knows what was coming out of me, but it was a fun experiment.

Was your nearest and dearest worried about you riding the motorbike?
No, she loved it, she thought it looked great. She thought it was a very sexy motorcycle and wanted to have a ride on it. The truth is I was blessed to work with the Yamaha Gomez. I'm not a sponsor for Yamaha, I don't have a contract, but I have had my experience on several different motorcycles, and they're the best because if you think of something that you want the bike to do, it will happen. So I could go impossibly fast on that motorcycle and tell it to stop safely and it will. And I totally trusted that motorcycle and I never got hurt. Now my insurance tells me I can't ride a motorcycle in my own life, so I have to do it when I'm working. I'm legally unable to ride motorcycles... because it's a contract I have with my life insurance. So whenever I do a movie and I have the opportunity to ride a bike, I go for it.



Did you grow more passionate about Ghost Rider, returning for a second film?
I felt I had more to say with it. Ghost Rider was a character that had an enormous impact on my childhood - I was eight when I discovered the Ghost Rider, in fact I had the very first comic and I would stare at that picture, that cover, and I couldn't get my head around how something so terrifying to look at, who was in fact using forces of evil, could also be considered good. How was this a superhero? So it was like my fist philosophical awakening - here's a character that's literally inspired by Goethe, this is a Faustian contract. But of course it's really all just a metaphor; this movie isn't sanctimonious at all, it's about pop art, it's about having fun, it's about going along for the ride. But in my opinion the 'deal with the devil' happens every day. Everyone sells their soul everyday; it's usually for love, you meet a lady or a gentleman and you think they love you but then you find out that it's for a green card or money or to make you pay for what their parents did to them - that's a deal with the devil. So for me that character and the movie is just a metaphor for life, and if you want to compete in this day and age where every other movie is a comic book movie you have to provide an alternative, and Ghost Rider does that.

You've said you're a big comic fan, can you tell us your favourite characters or story arcs that have meant something to you?
Well, I've always liked the monsters. I feel bad for The Hulk, or I did when I was a child. I want to make it clear though, as there is a misperception about me, blowing out of proportion of love of comic books: yes I'm loyal to them, like Rosebud in Citizen Kane, I love the influences on my childhood, but I'm not up at four in the morning with a stack of Spider-Man comics and milk and cookies. Now you have graphic novels for adults, but Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Hulk and Batman, the ones that were a little bit scary to look at and had some edge. I would say that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had the biggest effect on my childhood.

You seem to be drawn to anti-hero characters - what is it about them that draws you to them and what do you think is in you for people to think you're right for the role?
Well the anti-hero, and probably largely to do with Ghost Rider and that influence, and you're right to point out in my filmography that I'm drawn to characters that have some obstacle to overcome, whether it's inside of them or outside of them, because to me that's drama. That's the human experience, we all have that. But within that, I'm attracted to characters that allow me to realise my more surrealist and abstract dreams with art acting. I believe in art synthesis; I believe that acting should be no different from painting or music, that if you can get very outside the box - or as critics like to call over the top in a Francis Bacon painting - why can't you do that in a movie? But in order to do that as an actor, who is only a collaborative effect in a movie, he's not the director, you have to find characters that provide an engine that makes their behaviour make sense within the context of the movie. So I'm attracted to characters like Terence in Bad Lieutenant; he's high on cocaine, so I can make those sounds and moves, and I can do those crazy things with old ladies and handguns. In Ghost Rider, because you see my face morphing into a skull and there's pain in that, I can then do things like scraping at the door, scraping at the door, and make those notes come to life. I have to look for characters that allow me to realise my abstract dreams in cinema.

There's a gonzo vibe to those guys, Brian and Mark, was that something that attracted you? Did you see something of yourself in their approach?
Yeah, absolutely, they're daredevils, they're literally risking their lives to entertain you. You have Neveldine with a camera in one hand and a motorcycle in the other on roller blades being pulled a long at sixty miles an hour to get a shot and at any moment he could break his neck, or jumping off a cliff with a wire and a camera to collide with Idris' stunt man, and they're the only guys doing it. There are a lot of poetic filmmakers out there, but only Mark and Brian are poetic and risking their lives. It's like daredevil extreme sports filmmaking, you have to give them credit for that.

What was it like filming out in Romania?
The were a lot of wild, not wild but stray dogs everywhere, just running around, and I didn't know where they came from or where they would go and then I would near them at night and it was impossible not to think of Bram Stoker and The Children of the Night howling at the moon as the dogs were barking. So Romania was a spooky, cool place to make the movie, and the fact that the alleged Vlad Tepes castle was there just added to the charm of that. To ride my motorcycle out there and to be around all those scary energies but beautiful, just stimulated me when making this kind of a movie.

You're not afraid to do your own stunts, but is there anything you've shied away from in your career, stunt-wise?
I feel that I have to jump in when I'm doing a movie with a high level of risk. The odd thing you might notice with all the caffeine here on the table is that it calms me down. Caffeine makes me go the other way: it relaxes me, I can meet all of you and feel comfortable with all of you because I drank a Red Bull. If someone puts a bit of fire on me or asks me to drive extremely fast in a car chase, everything slows down, and it gets my mind off of everything else, emotional, whatever baggage and it all goes away and I relax. So I like doing stunts. This movie though, I knew it would be a whole other level of extremity, because their motto is 'if you break a bone, that shot is going in the movie'. So it was like 'okay, this is different' and my way of handling that was 'give me more!' With everything - if I'm working with a director who likes to do a lot of takes, I'll say 'gimme more, I'm not happy with twenty takes, let's do forty'. It's my way of psychologically reversing it.

Have you ever been injured on set before?
I won't mention the names of the movies, but I've had two concussions. And what's funny is that in American Football they say if you've had two concussions, in six months you're out of the game. And I did have two concussions in six months on two movies working stunts for the same company but I won't say who it was. Thankfully I'm okay, but one of them was ridiculous and should never had happened, where my head where the actor was in his moment and he grabbed my head and he smashed my head into the marble floor. Then I couldn't speak right for a couple of days, and things were very dizzy for me, but I'm okay, it was an unfortunate accident. It wasn't even a stunt or meant to be a stunt.

There's a nice moment in the film where you mention the possibility of a bee stinging a child's face - is that a nice reference to The Wicker Man?
Oh, now I never thought of it that way! But I do have fantasies of doing another Wicker Man, having another go at it, but this time I want to take it to Japan. Get your head around that one! Japan do great ghost stories, so we could do a ghost story about The Wicker Man.



You and Idris had a good chemistry on screen - did you get the chance to work together beforehand or did you just fool about on set?
No, we just hit it off. Idris is someone I consider a friend; I like him as a person, we had some good conversations, I admired his film presence - he's got a larger than life presence that was interesting to me. We had a good connection.

Idris Elba says you're funny and gracious and down to earth and generally a nice guy. Brian Taylor says you seem like a lunatic when seen in a movie - I wondered if this was just a by product of the characters you play or another facet of your personality?
Brian also said 'but there's a method to his madness' in that particular quote! The thing is I play characters, largely because of what I said earlier about realising my surrealist dreams in film acting, but I'm not insane. Damon Macready in Kick-Ass is insane; he's the one whose 48-years-old and dresses like Batman and goes out to seek vengeance. He's the one that probably watched a lot of Adam West and tried to talk like him, that's the character, that isn't me. I don't do that in my life, so that's the idea - I'm attracted to characters that are different, that are flawed and I love them for it, that's what interests me as a movie goer.

Given the depth and incredible variety of the roles you've tackled over the years, I wondered if you're looking back with a little tinge of regret that you never played Superman as was once suggested?
No. The only regret that I have is to have not worked with Tim Burton, I hope some day we will work together cause I know it will be special. As for that particular character I have no regrets, I think Ghost Rider is a far better match for me.

You've started a comic with your son Weston, Voodoo Child. Do you have any interest in taking it further and given the choice at another establish comic book character, which one would you like a crack at?
Well I don't want to play any more comic book characters and Voodoo Child would be great to see a television series or movie come out. I've tried and tried, and talked to different directors who seem interested and suddenly aren't interested, so I don't know where that's going to land.

Has being over here opened your eyes to British influences that would've normally passed you by, generally in the entertainment world?
I came here largely because of my interest in British history and mythology. Because even though I know that I'm far from home and a visitor in your beautiful country being an American, I can't help but feel some connection to the land, because of my appreciation for it and because of the way England happened, with different elements coming into the area and forming the language and the Romans and the Saxons. As a white American you can't help but feel a pull to that.