Latest / Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage / Bonus Episode: Butcher's Crossing

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Bonus Episode: Butcher's Crossing · Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage

• 0:00
  Oh, God. Oh, my God.
• 0:12
  Well, I can record it and yeah, I see that it's recording.
• 0:15
  OK. Well, I don't know how this new fangled technology works.
• 0:18
  I've only been doing this for almost two years.
• 0:20
  You literally work on a computer every day.
• 0:22
  Shh. Welcome back to Cajamatch,
• 0:28
  calling around about way of meeting Nicholas Cage.
• 0:30
  I'm Sean here with my cohost Nick. I'm Nick.
• 0:33
  And we have a special episode for you today.
• 0:36
  We recorded our leaving Las Vegas kiss of death episode.
• 0:40
  And then Peter got burgled and his computer is gone.
• 0:45
  Along with that episode, which I thought was probably pretty good.
• 0:48
  But you'll never know. Yeah, I'll never know.
• 0:50
  I don't remember the things I say after I say them.
• 0:53
  So we're pushing that episode back till the end of this bracket
• 0:56
  so we can not just have a boring conversation
• 0:59
  trying to remember what we said last time.
• 1:01
  So in the meantime, we watched Butcher's Crossing,
• 1:04
  which is a film that came out last year starring Nicholas Cage and other people.
• 1:10
  Yeah. So this film originally like got a can showing
• 1:14
  like a year or two ago, like I think in twenty two.
• 1:17
  And then finally got a theatrical release last year.
• 1:22
  It's pretty clear why they sat on it.
• 1:26
  It wasn't it wasn't great.
• 1:28
  I can sum up the plot real quick for you.
• 1:30
  There isn't one.
• 1:32
  Oh, well, there are themes, but there is not a plot.
• 1:36
  There are no characters. There is no arc.
• 1:38
  Shit happens. And you're meant to feel bad about it at the end.
• 1:41
  Yeah. The plot just kind of gets thinner, sort of like the Buffalo herds.
• 1:44
  Yeah. So this movie is a big old like Buffalo used to roam free.
• 1:48
  And then we fucked up. Yeah.
• 1:50
  We fucked up twice because they keep calling it Buffalo and their bison.
• 1:54
  Yeah. Oh, God. Get your American bison right.
• 1:59
  We've already said more words than anyone says in this entire film.
• 2:04
  Oh, that's not fair.
• 2:06
  They say things that's just not like important.
• 2:09
  They just bitch about like, you know,
• 2:12
  like having to eat buffalo meat all the time and being cold.
• 2:15
  This movie is 90 percent screensaver.
• 2:19
  Yeah. The the B camera team fucking killed it.
• 2:21
  They got some great, like establishing shots of like Montana
• 2:25
  and the surrounding area there.
• 2:27
  I was sure I was being punked at one point because like
• 2:32
  there's no connective tissue between most scenes.
• 2:36
  There's kind of like this dreamlike state throughout the film
• 2:39
  where it's cutting off the
• 2:40
  throughout the film, where it's cutting back and forth from a thing
• 2:43
  happening to nature, to a thing happening.
• 2:46
  And for about 45 minutes, like, OK, that's how the movie goes.
• 2:50
  And then they do that. But it is a dream.
• 2:53
  Yeah. So real quick, this movie is about I think his name was William.
• 2:58
  Yeah. William, who comes out to call.
• 3:02
  Well, not Colorado, Wyoming ish or whatever.
• 3:05
  I don't know to go on a buffalo hunt
• 3:09
  because he wants to see more of the world.
• 3:11
  Yeah. Like he's a Harvard kid who dropped out and left.
• 3:15
  And this is old timey times, Western times.
• 3:18
  So he goes out there.
• 3:19
  They still called Native Americans Indians. Yeah.
• 3:22
  They he hooks up with Nicholas Cage, who is a relatively discredited hunter.
• 3:29
  Like nobody seems to think he's going to do anything
• 3:33
  because he sucks at hunting, I guess.
• 3:35
  And he does. Cage decides to take them to Colorado
• 3:41
  on a big hunt to find some premium hides. Yep.
• 3:47
  That's the plot.
• 3:48
  All the bison, buffalo, whatever this movie called them are young
• 3:52
  and are constantly running from hunters.
• 3:55
  So their hides are no good.
• 3:56
  They have no fat.
• 3:56
  So he knows where there's like a herd of untouched creatures.
• 4:01
  So I think the problem that I had the most with this movie is like
• 4:04
  the tension never really gets there.
• 4:06
  It keeps like wanting to try to build tension in like the isolation
• 4:11
  that they feel and the growing concerns between the characters
• 4:17
  as to like how long they should stay versus Nicholas Cage's decline
• 4:22
  into insanity in just his desire to really maximize this buffalo hunt.
• 4:31
  And, you know, he he nearly wipes out a herd of like 4000 buffalo.
• 4:37
  And yeah, that's wild.
• 4:41
  Constantly little pushes to where maybe there's going to be
• 4:44
  character development or character interaction or even character establishment.
• 4:48
  Yeah. Like what Nick described to you as the plot of this film
• 4:51
  is the first 10 minutes of this film and then the rest of it's just
• 4:56
  beautiful shots of nature and occasional Nick Cage screaming.
• 4:59
  Yeah. And plenty of like just buffalo being shot over and over in repetition.
• 5:06
  And William washing blood off of him and vomiting.
• 5:10
  Yeah. At one point, it looked like he was getting sick,
• 5:13
  but that didn't become anything.
• 5:16
  They when he gets out to Butcher's Crossing,
• 5:19
  the town where they start off in, he meets the prettiest little sex worker
• 5:23
  in the old west, but sitting on that joke all day.
• 5:26
  And but he he can't get it up.
• 5:31
  That doesn't come back up in the story.
• 5:33
  That's not that there's no point to that.
• 5:35
  One of the other I think it was just he's a good Christian boy
• 5:39
  because his father was a pastor and he doesn't want to like
• 5:41
  get involved in premarital sex and stuff.
• 5:44
  She was throwing she was throwing him one.
• 5:46
  Yeah. It was going to be free.
• 5:47
  But the only time that ever comes up again is the skinner
• 5:53
  that comes with them, who has had trouble with the law,
• 5:56
  which is the only thing we get to know about him,
• 5:58
  thinks she's pretty and keeps talking.
• 6:01
  And talks about like twice that he's going to go visit her when they get back.
• 6:05
  So you think there's going to be tension there?
• 6:07
  No, because we'll just stop talking after 20 minutes in this film.
• 6:11
  Yeah. Yeah. He really shuts down.
• 6:13
  Now, you mentioned Fred the Skinner.
• 6:15
  I thought it was weird that like this movie started out pretty
• 6:21
  pretty strong on the this guy sucks.
• 6:23
  And it doesn't take long before you're like, oh, no, he's the most sympathetic character.
• 6:28
  He's the only sane one.
• 6:29
  He's the only one who says like, we should go back.
• 6:31
  Yeah. He says the sensible things.
• 6:34
  Your dog's taking a shit on the floor.
• 6:36
  I literally just took him outside.
• 6:38
  Do it, Ben. Drop a steamer.
• 6:41
  We'll name it butchers crossing.
• 6:46
  Yeah, he's the only one that ever talks sense to William
• 6:51
  and to cage about like we can't carry this many hides out.
• 6:55
  Why are we still shooting these buffalo?
• 6:58
  We are going to get trapped here over the winter.
• 7:00
  And they do. Which comes quick.
• 7:03
  And like they're having this fight.
• 7:06
  So this is an hour and 10 minutes into this film is when like
• 7:10
  they're actually having a fight that might lead to tension and story.
• 7:15
  And they're yelling and then they get drowned out by audio and then blizzard.
• 7:19
  Yeah. Yeah. That blizzard comes in hard and fast, which up in the mountains,
• 7:25
  like the Rockies and stuff.
• 7:27
  Sure. I could see that coming in quick.
• 7:29
  I've seen some really fast snow storms blow in when I lived in Montana.
• 7:34
  But but like they they need to leave before winter blizzard.
• 7:37
  And then the first time I saw a title card in the movie,
• 7:41
  but maybe I blank for an earlier one, but it just says winter.
• 7:45
  Oh, yeah. No, they established fall as they were riding out.
• 7:48
  And I was like, well, that doesn't bode well if you just declare the time by season.
• 7:53
  I miss that. Yeah.
• 7:55
  So, yeah, like it snows them in.
• 7:58
  The the pass is impassable, which defeats the purpose of a pass.
• 8:03
  Yeah. So they get snowed in and cage establishes that it's going to be,
• 8:09
  you know, six to eight months before they're able to like get out
• 8:14
  with the snow covering the pass.
• 8:17
  So it just becomes like a survival
• 8:21
  movie without having any of the good elements of a survival movie.
• 8:25
  We get some cold like nobody gets frostbite.
• 8:30
  Nobody like wanders off in the snow and gets lost or anything like that.
• 8:36
  It just misses misses the mark on what this could have been.
• 8:42
  The only thing I noticed about this was supposed to be like six to eight weeks.
• 8:46
  Of for their trip is how Nick Cage sells it.
• 8:51
  They get through winter.
• 8:52
  They get to spring. They still have liquor.
• 8:55
  Oh, yeah. Well, they established or they they had a very good shopping list.
• 9:00
  I think what's his name? Charlie or? Yeah.
• 9:03
  Yeah. Crazy Charlie, the one armed wagon driver.
• 9:08
  Yeah, he was in charge of the camp.
• 9:09
  Yeah, he's a big liquor enthusiast, so I'm sure he had quite the stockpile.
• 9:15
  But there was a whole there was a whole part in this film where they like
• 9:18
  couldn't find water for two days.
• 9:20
  Yeah. Yeah, they did not pack enough water and two days.
• 9:24
  That doesn't seem like enough for delirium.
• 9:28
  Probably more than two days, but like probably was the this movie shot beautifully.
• 9:33
  Yeah. I mean, the DP did a great job.
• 9:36
  I think everything was shot really well.
• 9:40
  What I find interesting is so to Western
• 9:43
  Nick Cage Westerns came out last year, one of them had a plot, but no budget.
• 9:47
  One of them had a budget, but no plot.
• 9:49
  Yeah, neither of them were really that good.
• 9:51
  No. But I think the old way would have been better
• 9:55
  if it would have had this budget or looked this good
• 9:58
  because a lot of my a lot of what took me out of the old way
• 10:00
  was just how bad it looked.
• 10:02
  Especially that mustache in the beginning. Yeah.
• 10:05
  Also, this is the boldest I think we've ever seen. Nicholas Cage.
• 10:09
  Probably. I mean, he's a full shaved.
• 10:11
  But he's got like the wildest, thickest beard.
• 10:15
  Yeah. Like it's growing almost to his eyes.
• 10:18
  Yeah. I don't think we see a lot of Nick Cage shaved head. Yeah.
• 10:21
  And he's constantly shaving his head in this movie.
• 10:24
  Yeah. Like every other scene, he's keeping it down.
• 10:27
  So as they get like they get out of there,
• 10:30
  Charlie gets killed because he's trying to poison Fred.
• 10:33
  Yes. Fred throws his Bible on the fire.
• 10:35
  Yeah. Fred's a dick.
• 10:37
  And then Fred dies because the wagon goes over a cliff.
• 10:41
  I thought that was such a cheap death after we had like Fred
• 10:45
  beating Charlie to death
• 10:48
  for trying to poison him with strychnine and not using enough. Yeah.
• 10:52
  Just having the axle brake on their way over the pass
• 10:56
  and like having the wagon roll back off a cliff.
• 10:59
  I was like, oh, that's really limp.
• 11:02
  But somehow they managed to retrieve all of the bison pelts.
• 11:06
  No, they didn't.
• 11:07
  They went back completely empty.
• 11:10
  Yeah. But Nick Cage said he had him up in the mountains.
• 11:12
  Yeah. He's talking about the ones that they covered up.
• 11:14
  There was three thousand pelts that they didn't bring back
• 11:17
  because they couldn't carry them all.
• 11:18
  They only had like twelve hundred or something.
• 11:21
  Yeah. They hid a bunch of pelts up in their camp
• 11:25
  so that they could come back and get them in the spring
• 11:27
  or whatever when they have another wagon.
• 11:29
  Yeah. But then they lose all these pelts.
• 11:31
  But spoiler alert, it doesn't fucking matter because while they were going
• 11:35
  the pelt trade completely just went under.
• 11:38
  Yeah. So what previously was four dollars a hide is now ten cents
• 11:42
  or some shit like that.
• 11:43
  And now Will's just kind of sitting there and the guy who went out there
• 11:48
  to like get a job from it's like, well, do you get what you wanted?
• 11:52
  Which I'm like, that's that's a shitty arc.
• 11:55
  Yeah. I mean, he did get to see the country and he experienced something
• 11:59
  and he lived, but he also got exactly what that guy was telling him
• 12:03
  was going to happen.
• 12:03
  It's like it's going to change you.
• 12:05
  But because we didn't know Will was in the first place, other than he didn't fuck.
• 12:09
  Yeah. And because we don't know who he is now because he just stopped talking.
• 12:15
  There's no arc to that character.
• 12:17
  Yeah. All you know.
• 12:18
  OK, let's talk about what we know about each character.
• 12:21
  So Will was living in Boston.
• 12:25
  He went to Harvard.
• 12:26
  He came out to just experience something.
• 12:29
  Doesn't have sex.
• 12:32
  That's it. That's it.
• 12:33
  That that's all we know about that character from the whole movie.
• 12:37
  Nick Cage. People don't really trust him.
• 12:40
  He hates the fur trader in Butcher's Crossing.
• 12:44
  Has a weird like revenge thing with Buffalo.
• 12:48
  Yeah, I think he just
• 12:50
  been called a poor hunter for so long, like he's just not a good buffalo hunter.
• 12:56
  So he's really just trying to prove himself with that.
• 12:59
  Yeah. And that that's all we get from him.
• 13:02
  Like Charlie one hand superstitious.
• 13:06
  Yeah. Drunk a lot.
• 13:08
  Fred was in trouble with the law.
• 13:10
  It's kind of a dick.
• 13:12
  Yeah. And talks about St.
• 13:14
  Louis a lot. Yeah.
• 13:15
  So that's two strikes against him.
• 13:18
  That Francine's a whore.
• 13:19
  And Francine is. Yes.
• 13:22
  You can't work around that.
• 13:25
  OK, we get the mention of them crossing Indian country or,
• 13:30
  you know, Native American lands.
• 13:32
  And then they make their camp like Nicholas Cage makes their camp
• 13:35
  on Native American burial ground.
• 13:39
  And then we never have any interactions with any Native Americans.
• 13:43
  Well, they establish when they're going through the Native American territories,
• 13:47
  they find a shack with a dead hunter in it holding his own balls.
• 13:51
  Yeah, that was that was pretty good.
• 13:53
  I mean, separated from his body.
• 13:55
  Yeah, his balls were cut off and left in his hand.
• 13:57
  And they established that it was
• 14:00
  the Native Americans who did it.
• 14:01
  Yeah, because they don't like hunters.
• 14:04
  All right. That's going to come up. Nope.
• 14:06
  Yeah. Nope.
• 14:07
  We've just got this trading outpost that has no purpose for the rest of the movie.
• 14:13
  You can watch this movie like silently and it would make just as it would.
• 14:17
  You get just as much out of it.
• 14:18
  It might be better if you had like a really good kind of
• 14:23
  dark wave, like score.
• 14:26
  I'd like and just put the movie on mute and let it let it ride.
• 14:30
  I mean, so we know nothing about these characters.
• 14:33
  We know even less about Nick Cage.
• 14:36
  I feel like we know nothing about him, really,
• 14:38
  except he comes back at the end for trades completely gone.
• 14:43
  He makes nothing out of this.
• 14:45
  So he burns down the fur trader shack, kills the fur trader,
• 14:50
  gives one last look to will and rides off.
• 14:53
  Yeah, I think actually the smartest thing he did was when he burned
• 14:56
  all those hides because I was like, OK, maybe he's like trying to revitalize
• 15:02
  the demand by getting rid of all this surplus.
• 15:06
  No, that doesn't factor into anything.
• 15:08
  He just burns everything and leaves.
• 15:10
  Yeah. Which is a pretty baller move.
• 15:12
  And then will literally just rides out into the plains.
• 15:15
  Yeah. Like there's no even arc about will becoming like an outdoorsman.
• 15:21
  No. Yeah, we don't see him ever like start a fire even.
• 15:25
  No, the most we get from him is him skinning
• 15:29
  buffalo along with the skinner.
• 15:32
  Yeah. And well, and like will's one moment in this is trying to get them to
• 15:38
  trying to get them to leave without having to confront Nicholas Cage
• 15:41
  when he's like Nicholas Cage is trying to herd up the
• 15:45
  buffalo that are moving.
• 15:47
  And will just start shooting around them to get them to like run faster.
• 15:51
  Yeah. Nothing happens in this room.
• 15:54
  Yeah. And, you know, it's it's based off of a book.
• 15:57
  And I'm assuming there's a narrator.
• 16:01
  Yeah, there must be some kind of like
• 16:05
  dialogue that happens with the reader that just doesn't translate into the film.
• 16:11
  Yeah, that was my thought.
• 16:12
  The the writing is really the weakest portion of this, which is unfortunate.
• 16:17
  The acting I felt was pretty good.
• 16:19
  I really like the guy who played Fred.
• 16:21
  I thought he did a great job.
• 16:22
  Nick Cage, I enjoyed.
• 16:24
  I think he did a good job.
• 16:26
  Well, and you said like the B camera team got such great footage.
• 16:28
  It would have been nice to see the characters interact with any of that.
• 16:31
  Yeah, I was thinking that when I was watching it, like everything shot
• 16:35
  so close and tight on the the actors, the characters,
• 16:40
  and you never get to see them necessarily in the environment so much.
• 16:44
  I mean, there's some wider shots with them riding and whatnot, but it's
• 16:50
  you've got such beautiful country.
• 16:51
  It's shot in Montana.
• 16:53
  And it's really just a backdrop
• 16:57
  when it could have been more of a player in the movie. Yeah.
• 17:02
  Somebody tried to make a documentary or this is just B roll from a documentary.
• 17:06
  It looks like it could have been like planet Earth.
• 17:08
  Yeah, like it's really well.
• 17:10
  Sure, David Attenborough or like Sigourney Weaver should be talking over this.
• 17:13
  And they're like, we got Nick Cage for two days.
• 17:15
  Let's make a Buffalo Hunting movie.
• 17:19
  So, yeah, beautiful film.
• 17:20
  If you want to see some cool, if you just want to see some beautiful, like film,
• 17:24
  watch it. Yeah.
• 17:25
  I take Nick's advice, put on some like dark wave or something and just zone out.
• 17:30
  And, you know, eat a sandwich.
• 17:32
  You do you.
• 17:33
  So if you could fix this movie, because we're obviously skilled
• 17:38
  and equipped to do these sorts of things.
• 17:41
  Well, what would you fix in it?
• 17:42
  Oh, I'd put a plot in.
• 17:44
  I'd put character interaction in.
• 17:46
  But shy of that, I would just cut it down to about 25 minutes.
• 17:51
  25 minutes of just nature scenes.
• 17:54
  Just cut out all the actors.
• 17:56
  You can cut down this entire plot and character,
• 17:59
  all the character bits to about 25 minutes.
• 18:01
  I think I assume I would probably make this more of
• 18:05
  like what I would want from this plot wise is something more of like
• 18:09
  that survival element from like the Revenant or something like that.
• 18:14
  Yeah, so we just need a bear attack.
• 18:16
  There wasn't even any like aggressive wildlife.
• 18:19
  Yeah, that's weird.
• 18:20
  The stakes are real low. Yeah.
• 18:22
  It's just a little bit of mild insanity, lots of buffalo meat
• 18:27
  and a little bit of strychnine.
• 18:29
  So I'm going to give you I'm going to give you I'm going to throw you a bone here, Nick.
• 18:31
  I'm going to give you something here. Oh, please do.
• 18:33
  There's finally a movie that has less going on than Primal.
• 18:39
  Primal is thick with plot.
• 18:41
  Definitely go watch Primal.
• 18:43
  CG Buffalo. Who do you think is the better hunter?
• 18:46
  Nick Cage in Primal or Nick Cage in Butcher's Crossing?
• 18:50
  I don't know. He almost wiped out those buffalo and Butcher's Crossing.
• 18:53
  Yeah, it almost feels like happenstance that he was able to find them, though.
• 18:58
  Yeah, just a real lucky shot.
• 19:02
  Where would you put this on the the chart?
• 19:06
  You know, I'd say lower good cage.
• 19:08
  And medium bad movie.
• 19:12
  It's a bad film.
• 19:14
  And I just don't think Nick Cage is given anything to do in this movie to like
• 19:18
  warrant really a good or bad performance.
• 19:21
  Yeah, he smolders, though. He does smolder.
• 19:24
  Yeah, he's got kind of like a low burning heat inside of him.
• 19:29
  And you do see a little bit of like back and forth.
• 19:33
  He does relent in the end.
• 19:35
  Like he, you know, gives in and is like, yeah, OK, I fucked up.
• 19:39
  I took too long and now we're snowed in here.
• 19:42
  And then when they, you know, do finally leave and everything, it's like, OK,
• 19:47
  I give let's let's do it.
• 19:49
  He just really wants to prove himself because I imagine he gets shit on a lot.
• 19:54
  Yeah. And usually you'd have to pay for that.
• 19:56
  Will wouldn't have had to unless you hang out with your dog.
• 20:01
  It was shit on the dog.
• 20:02
  Just the carpet, just that one specific part of the carpet.
• 20:05
  He's a puppy. He is.
• 20:07
  Get over it, people. Yeah.
• 20:09
  What's the weird one is he will pee on the pee pad and poop outside
• 20:13
  is outside of the kennel, the pen on the carpet or poop on the pee pad
• 20:19
  and then pee on the carpet. Oh, OK.
• 20:21
  He won't do both in the same place.
• 20:23
  He's a very discerning dog.
• 20:25
  Interesting. I guess you just don't shit where you pee.
• 20:28
  Good night, everybody.
• 20:38
  Bye bye.
• 20:43
  And what are you doing?
• 20:44
  You're just staring at your poop.
• 20:46
  Oh, no, never mind. I think he's eating it.
• 20:48
  Keep talking.
• 20:52
  Yeah.
• 20:53
  I think he's trying to move it into the pee pad,
• 20:59
  so he's not like in trouble.
• 21:01
  It's like, no, no, I think he's just trying to eat it.
• 21:03
  Ah, gross dog.