Nicolas Cage on Joe, the Calming Effect of Venomous Snakes, and Why He’s Been So “Over-the-Top” in Movies Lately

Tye mentioned last night that you went to Texas a month before filming began to prepare. What did that preparation entail?

I wanted to get comfortable with David and his process. I wanted to rehearse with him. I wanted to spend some time with the predominantly African-American crew so it seemed like we were all one group and had all been working together for years. I wanted to find out who was going to be Gary in the movie. I got to meet Tye and spend a little time with him. You soak up the culture in Austin, somewhere there in the countryside. You get a feeling of that and get that in my body so by the time David rolled, much of the anxiety and the adrenaline was out of the way.

When you start a movie, it’s not like other kinds of work that you have when you know your boss for years or colleagues for years. You’re meeting everyone, mostly, for the first time. You have to get comfortable with those people so you can perform, because the first thing that is going to shut you down is any kind of anxiety. You have to be relaxed so you can remember your lines.

Your chemistry with the crew of workers was so great. What did you do with those guys, who were not professional actors, to familiarize yourself with them?

We would read through the scenes together. We would sit in chairs like this in a circle and talk and share stories, and get to know each other a little bit. Have some laughs. We’d talk about their lives and what their interests were like. One guy had his own barbeque shack, and he really loved his food he would cook for people. Some people had some hard lives but were actually very sophisticated and could talk about deeper things. I would say it was like a crash course in getting to know each other very, very well, so that by the time we were filming, we wouldn’t have to act.

Was it refreshing to work with “normal people” as opposed to professional actors? David said that he found many of his cast members on the street in Austin.

I thought it was great. You know, I’m not a trained actor. I’m someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own. I would look at movies and read books. These people who David found—it was because of his remarkable eye or his confidence. For example, Gary Poulter, who played [Gary’s father] Wade—he was a street performer doing his break-dancing, pop-locking moves on the street. [Laughs.] David had a real eye for knowing who was an actor or performer. And I was way up for it. I am open to any kind of experiment with the process.

Do you approach working with younger actors, like Tye, differently than you do adults?

No, I didn’t think about it in those terms. I know how serious he is about film acting, and he came in ultra-prepared. It was never going to be a situation where we were asking each other for advice. It was on from day one. I like working with young people. They haven’t had their dreams whipped out of them yet and are still confident in where their future is going. I find that energy pretty exciting to be around.

In one scene, you hold an actual poisonous snake by its head. During the Q&A, you mentioned that the encounter actually calmed you. Can you explain why?

Well, yeah. Having done some adventure movies and having had entirely too much coffee in my life, I realized that I’m one of those people where stunts and caffeine actually slow me down and relax me. I had a five-page scene of dialogue, which was a very important scene, where Gary and Joe meet each other for the first time. When I knew there was going to be a snake in the scene—and originally, he was not as in it as he ultimately is now—I said, “Well, you’re going to have a real one, right?”

They said, “We have one with venom and one without.” I said, “Well, I want the one with venom.” So did David, because it had bigger fangs and it looked better on camera. The one with no venom was kind of de-fanged. So he wanted it, but I said that I wanted to pick it up and use it in the scene. David said, “Why?” And I said, “Because it will relax me.” I realized that it wasn’t about the glory of holding a real cottonmouth snake. It was about surfing the adrenaline up to the moment of getting it in my hands so I could get control of my own anxiety and adrenaline so I could do my own five-page scene with Tye. And it worked.

That seems very dedicated on your part. Were there any mishaps with the snake?

Well, the bigger issue was that while I was holding the snake, he can also spit the poison in Tye’s face, so I had to very gently move his head in such a way so that the poison would go not in anyone’s face. That was also a complication, but what I’m very amazed by is kind of the happy accident of filmmaking. Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there’s the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there’s the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing. By the end of the movie, and you see the snake tattoo on Joe’s arm, and then he ultimately pays the ultimate price to save Gary’s future, the snake becomes medicine.

Lastly, the audience seemed to love seeing you in this kind of role again. Do you think you will continue on this more dramatic trajectory in your career now?

I’m going to keep trying to find movies where I don’t have to act as much, but I am also going to keep it eclectic. For me right now, I want to be very director-driven and very much a part of finding—the script can be whatever, it can be science fiction, it can be down-and-dirty drama, or it can be a comedy—but whatever it is, I want to feel like I can just play the part as honestly as possible.