Tyler Treese: Nicolas Cage is somebody who stays busy, but he always has a good eye for picking interesting projects that give him room to work and do these interesting characters. How was the process of getting him on board?Well, I think, like most of them, you send him this project, you make him an offer, and you hope he likes it. I can only assume his manager gets … I don’t know how many scripts a week his manager must get, but I have a feeling it’s a lot.
I always kept that in mind with writing. I grew up watching everything from … I was an early watcher of the Marx Brothers and, when you grow up with Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Mel Brooks, Peter Sellers … I’ve always had a comic vibe growing up, watching my films. I think a lot of that just gets sprinkled in there subconsciously. Part of it was to surprise people, that when you think something serious is gonna happen, I make it lighthearted and vice versa.
I tried to keep it as basic as possible with that stuff, but also if you’re going to kill someone, I’m always trying to find different ways. Flare gun in the mouth going off, things of that nature. So I think what I did was I would come up with an end piece of how … like, I knew that I wanted someone to shoot a flare gun in someone’s mouth, because you can’t really kill someone with a flare gun, but if you did that, it might do some damage. So then I reverse engineered how I got there.
You never know when working with any actor what the experience and the relationship … they’re all unique, that you have as a director with your actors. His was incredible. He’s really engaged in the script [and] the story. He’s very engaged in the character and he’s fully engrossed the entire time in that character. The other thing that I found that Nick brought to the table that I really appreciated was, one of the first calls we had was he had notes for the script. And I thought, “Okay, great.
I was watching The Big Store when I was probably two years old. So I have definitive locked-in memories of Harpo Marx trying to roller skate on top countertops and not understanding what I was looking at. Just this man was flying through the air who couldn’t talk on roller skates. It blew my mind. When I was a child, I don’t remember exactly, but that memory’s in my head very specifically as probably my first cinema experience.
I just thought it’s fun when a bad guy is nuanced and he’s not just a heavy. That’s why I said, “Well, why aren’t thugs written smart or well-read or intelligent?” Him talking about it surprises the girl and he says, “Well, you look at me, you’re judging me. You don’t think I read Othello.” And I love that he brings that sort of weight to the table. I think it helps the audience start to feel something for Ron that, “Oh, maybe he’s a human.
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Source: Variety - 🏆 108. / 63 Read more »