Latest / Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage / Leaving Las Vegas vs The Runner

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Leaving Las Vegas vs The Runner · Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage

• 0:00
  Hi everybody, this is producer Peter. This is a episode where we talk about the movie
• 0:05
  Leaving Las Vegas and the movie The Runner. Leaving Las Vegas is about a man who has severe
• 0:11
  alcoholism and drinks himself to death and is also very candid about talking about sex
• 0:18
  work. So just be aware that those are topics that we are going to discuss.
• 0:23
  Oh god. Oh my god. Fuuuuck.
• 0:34
  So, we're cool if you're having an affair, people.
• 0:39
  Affairs cool. Just don't be a dick about it.
• 0:43
  I mean, if you're an alcoholic, I'm not going to treat you poorly. It's fine if you're an alcoholic, too.
• 0:50
  Just don't be a dick.
• 0:51
  Yeah.
• 0:52
  That's the general policy. Don't be a dick.
• 0:54
  Don't be a dick.
• 0:56
  And with that, welcome back to Cage Match, colon, a roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage.
• 1:01
  I am one of your three talking people here, Sean.
• 1:06
  I am second talking person, Nick.
• 1:09
  Hi, and I'm producer Peter, the third talking person, who will talk less.
• 1:15
  This week we are we watched Leaving Las Vegas from 1995, I believe, and 2015?
• 1:25
  Correct.
• 1:26
  The Runner, a movie I'm sure you've never heard of.
• 1:29
  Which is a shame, because you should always know what to avoid. I'm kidding. It's delightful.
• 1:35
  I did get annoyed, though, trying to look it up on IMDb, because it would always bring up any other movie.
• 1:40
  May's Runner.
• 1:41
  Anything but The Runner.
• 1:42
  Anything but this movie.
• 1:43
  Which surely you didn't mean this movie.
• 1:45
  Yeah. I was getting frustrated looking to find it, to watch it until I realized I owned it.
• 1:50
  And then I was frustrated that I owned it.
• 1:54
  Yeah. Well, I had to watch it on freebie.
• 1:56
  The ads were shockingly the most entertaining part.
• 2:00
  There'd be a real serious moment and it cut to like Cheetos.
• 2:05
  So that was amazing.
• 2:07
  Yeah. Snap into a Slim Jim or a fucking Surge ad.
• 2:12
  Yeah.
• 2:13
  Where people just start plowing through each other, like jumping over couches while playing street hockey.
• 2:19
  Surge.
• 2:21
  I miss Surge.
• 2:23
  I used to sell Jolt Cola at my high school.
• 2:26
  Yeah.
• 2:27
  Like, under the bleachers?
• 2:28
  I mean, kind of.
• 2:29
  Was it like outlawed?
• 2:31
  Well, it was like so heavily caffeinated that they didn't want it around on campus.
• 2:35
  But I mean, that's absurd to say back.
• 2:38
  Is this like is this how your fascination with trench coats started, Peter?
• 2:43
  That and my love of flashing.
• 2:45
  There we go.
• 2:46
  We got there.
• 2:47
  It's Weiner Wednesday, everybody.
• 2:49
  Yeah, we're recording on a Wednesday, which is odd for us.
• 2:53
  But, you know, our podcast, like our decision making in terms of what wins is Mercurial.
• 2:59
  That's the word. And, you know, we kind of make up the rules as we go along.
• 3:02
  And based on the way the wins go and the fickle decisions of our Lord and Savior, Thor, hail Thor.
• 3:09
  We picked some weird winners in the past based on the caginess of the film.
• 3:15
  I'm just going to say up front, I don't think anyone's going to be surprised by the winner this week.
• 3:19
  No, they probably shouldn't be.
• 3:21
  But we should talk about why we're doing this.
• 3:23
  Through no science or metrics, we are going to determine out of 64.
• 3:29
  The will of Thor.
• 3:30
  And the will of Thor out of 64 Nicolas Cage movies, a mixture of good and bad, but mostly ranked from best to worst.
• 3:40
  The cagiest or most enjoyable Nick Cage movie by the end of this March Madness bracket style.
• 3:46
  So, yeah, we will come up with the ultimate Nick Cage flick definitively forever, which everyone will agree with.
• 3:53
  Yeah.
• 3:54
  The Internet will have no problem with our decision.
• 3:56
  Well, and Nicolas Cage will confirm it for us to in person.
• 4:00
  The ultimate goal is to meet Nicolas Cage.
• 4:02
  I mean, I'm going to be straight up honest with you.
• 4:04
  If we don't make it to the end, but we meet Nicolas Cage before that, I'm just fucking packing it in because we're never going to we're never going to match that high.
• 4:11
  Well, if we meet Nicolas Cage, like mid run and we just stop.
• 4:16
  I mean, the whole point of this is to meet Nick Cage.
• 4:18
  Yeah. So I'm sorry.
• 4:20
  Yeah. And our Patreon support of our fans.
• 4:24
  Oh, yeah. They got like a whole nother Patreon support.
• 4:27
  Well, did we? Well, he sent me some money over Venmo.
• 4:31
  And I was like, do you want to join the Patreon?
• 4:35
  Yeah, we got to we got to give. Is this someone you know?
• 4:37
  Yeah, it's somebody I know. Give him a shout out.
• 4:39
  That'd be weird. Yeah. He's now in the Sparkle Buddy tier.
• 4:43
  This one's for you, Sean, who's not my co-host. Nailed it.
• 4:48
  That would have been very confusing for me.
• 4:50
  Somebody has to keep this thing afloat.
• 4:52
  I'm just a talent. All right.
• 4:54
  Enough jokes, enough jokes on our comedy podcast.
• 4:56
  Let's talk Nick Cage films.
• 4:58
  I think we should start with The Runner this week.
• 5:00
  Yeah, we've already kind of given a little intro to it.
• 5:03
  Yeah. The Runner is a film about takes place in 2010 right after the BP oil spill.
• 5:10
  Local politician.
• 5:12
  He's looking to run for the Senate when like most every politician,
• 5:16
  he's got a dirty little secret and has had an affair and has to resign in disgrace.
• 5:22
  The dirty secret is his penis.
• 5:24
  Which can we just say I don't think that was a secret
• 5:26
  because he seemed to be passing that around.
• 5:28
  Oh, my God.
• 5:30
  We have seen Nick Cage hump so much these last few months.
• 5:34
  It's really inspiring.
• 5:36
  I do. I have appreciated the wayward nature of his sternum bush.
• 5:41
  Oh, man. Yeah. Topless Nick Cage is really something.
• 5:45
  He's got just like quite the Brillo pad up there.
• 5:48
  Or like it's Ghost Rider where it's silky smooth.
• 5:51
  Oh, I mean, that was for aerodynamics.
• 5:54
  I mean, he needed to drive fast.
• 5:56
  One of my very few notes from this episode was Harry Cage returns.
• 6:01
  Yes. Yep.
• 6:04
  So this movie is going to star a bunch of people you've never heard of,
• 6:09
  but three super cool people.
• 6:12
  Nicholas Cage as Colin Price, Peter Fonda in here as Rain Price.
• 6:18
  That's Nicholas Cage's alcoholic father and making his big return.
• 6:24
  Wendell Pierce, Frank LeGrand.
• 6:27
  Shit.
• 6:29
  As Nick Cage is like political.
• 6:32
  What are those things they do?
• 6:34
  They he's a campaign guy.
• 6:36
  He's a campaign manager.
• 6:38
  Well, I mean, what's that thing that politicians do?
• 6:40
  They campaign. So with that, I mean, we've already seen Peter Fonda
• 6:45
  and Wendell Pierce and two other Nick Cage films.
• 6:48
  We saw Peter Fonda play.
• 6:50
  Well, in this film, he plays Nick Cage's father, whereas in Ghost Rider,
• 6:54
  he played Ghost Rider's ghost daddy.
• 6:57
  Ghost daddy. Ghost daddy.
• 6:59
  Yeah. And Wendell Pierce played his partner in It Could Happen to You.
• 7:04
  And we also there was also one other connection.
• 7:06
  Like this was just a who's who of people who have been in the cage films.
• 7:10
  Judd Lamand, I think was his name, who was in Rage, Left Behind
• 7:16
  and USS Indianapolis, Colin Men of Courage.
• 7:20
  Wow. So this guy's been in four other Nick Cage films.
• 7:23
  So, I mean, this is really actually fueling the NCU theory, right?
• 7:27
  I forgot about that theory.
• 7:29
  So this movie was done, I feel, at a very specific time in Cage's career
• 7:34
  when he was just taking literally anything.
• 7:37
  It's not his best movie times for sure.
• 7:41
  No, because I mean, I just watched this movie last night
• 7:45
  and I can tell you very little about it.
• 7:47
  It is not horrendously memorable.
• 7:50
  Yeah, I mean, it's just Nicholas Cage is sober.
• 7:54
  Like he's a non-drinker. He stopped drinking.
• 7:57
  His father had an alcohol problem.
• 8:00
  Continues to.
• 8:01
  Yeah, continues to. He's probably just going to drink himself to death.
• 8:06
  Spoiler alert, he does.
• 8:08
  Yeah. Like he gets into this sex scandal, kind of loses his political career because of it.
• 8:14
  Ends up like picking up drinking when he and his wife split up.
• 8:19
  I mean, she's a politician's wife and they were both lawyers.
• 8:22
  And her whole stance is at first that this is worse for,
• 8:26
  this is just bad for both their careers.
• 8:28
  And then he just straight up tells him if he resigns, she will leave him.
• 8:31
  Oh, yeah. And I mean, she was a terrible wife.
• 8:34
  Like it was obviously a very politically based marriage.
• 8:39
  She only wanted to be with him because it was going to propel her
• 8:43
  as he climbed up into the Senate and stuff.
• 8:45
  Well, and he, his character is supposed to be very kind of moral.
• 8:49
  He's very anti-oil, wants new energy.
• 8:53
  So he has a sit down with a CEO of.
• 8:56
  Yeah, fictional. Yeah. I'm sure.
• 8:59
  And, you know, this guy's trying to get Nick Cage in his back pocket for what he runs for the Senate.
• 9:05
  And, you know, his wife set up the meeting and she's pissed that he's not kind of taking the money.
• 9:11
  Yeah. So, yeah, he loses his, you know, loses all clout, resigns in shame.
• 9:17
  We get a great little montage of him starting to drink again and seeing sex workers.
• 9:23
  I did have a note for this scene, though.
• 9:25
  I'm wondering if maybe Trojan paid for any of this movie because there's a very prominent displayed to Trojan condoms on the nightstand.
• 9:34
  But you don't have your condoms just in like an artistic display.
• 9:38
  I keep mine in a like jewel case with like a little glass bell over it.
• 9:43
  Like a cloche. Yeah. Yeah. Glass cloche. Yeah. Hey, what's for dinner tonight?
• 9:49
  Weiner Wednesday. All right. This episode might be funnier than I thought it would be.
• 9:56
  So long as we don't talk about the movies, we're fucking banging here.
• 10:00
  He starts a nonprofit just kind of trying to help out all the fishermen and to get the water cleaned up.
• 10:06
  Yeah. Make sure they get their insurance money, their money from BP.
• 10:10
  But nobody wants to pay for any of this. Yeah.
• 10:13
  Obviously, because it's expensive and Cage doesn't have any money. Yeah.
• 10:19
  So he ends up like getting a large donation. Three. What is it? Three and a half million. Yeah. Something like that.
• 10:27
  And so it's like, oh, hey, we're actually going to be able to move forward on some of this.
• 10:30
  And then they get a bunch of new like clients show up and, you know, he can't afford it to cover everybody.
• 10:37
  The money winds up. It comes from that fictional oil company again. Yeah.
• 10:43
  And long story short, he ends up meeting with them, taking the deal, reigniting his career.
• 10:51
  And yeah, it becomes a full shill for big oil.
• 10:53
  Like the movie starts with him talking about being there for the workers of Louisiana and the fishermen and how BP is ruined that.
• 11:01
  And the last scene is him giving the exact same speech, but about how, you know, we have to rely on oil and how we can't put good, hardworking oil workers out of work.
• 11:10
  Right. And then it zooms out to the shot of cartoonishly bad CG, like plumes of smoke and smokestacks, like just in fire.
• 11:20
  Yeah, I don't know if they had an agenda. It's super heavy handed.
• 11:24
  Doesn't seem like they were trying to steer us away from oil at all.
• 11:27
  Are you telling me that politicians are bad and corporate shills?
• 11:31
  All the politicians I know are as a whole like Nick Cage's.
• 11:40
  Nick Cage's performance in this is not bad.
• 11:43
  I mean, it's Nick Cage. He's going to put in the work.
• 11:45
  Yeah, I thought I thought by and large all the main actors did a fine job with the material.
• 11:51
  It is a very dry sardonic political drama, like nothing really of consequence happens to anybody.
• 11:59
  He has he winds up starting to date his publicist.
• 12:02
  But she's separated from her husband and they end up getting back together.
• 12:06
  And that just makes Cage drink more.
• 12:09
  Yeah. And that's when he kind of goes over the deep end.
• 12:11
  And that's the straw that broke the camel's back that made it makes him go back to his wife.
• 12:15
  He really said, yeah, it's like, oh, I can't have my girlfriend.
• 12:18
  I guess I better just have my political non-romantic relationship back.
• 12:23
  And then just, you know, get my career back by like just being a complete hack.
• 12:27
  And yeah, yeah. So it's like what?
• 12:29
  Like pretty, pretty quick succession.
• 12:31
  Like was it his dad died and then his lady gets back with her husband.
• 12:37
  Yeah. And then he goes on a bender and tries to go back to his old house,
• 12:42
  which up to this point, he could still like open the gate with the clicker.
• 12:45
  And the wife like finally disconnected that.
• 12:48
  So he wound up just careening, burning the gate, rammed the gate, and then crashed into his old garage.
• 12:57
  And then is like later, like woken up in the car, bleeding from his head by his ex, his wife, because they never actually get divorced.
• 13:05
  Right. The divorce papers never got signed.
• 13:07
  And that's the runner. Yeah.
• 13:10
  It's a banger. You know, this movie has kind of got me thinking that we need to put together like an audio book
• 13:20
  or something that we can sell and just do the Nick Cage dialect like School of Dialects.
• 13:26
  Holy shit. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about the accent.
• 13:29
  I mean, it comes out hard with a Louisiana accent that most times sounds kind of Boston.
• 13:36
  I think a lot of his accents come off very Massachusetts.
• 13:40
  This one, it's got the occasional kind of I had in mind.
• 13:45
  I had him written in my notes. Elmer Fuddish. Yeah.
• 13:49
  He's barely very concerned about the people of Louisiana.
• 13:55
  I thought Peter Fonda's was OK, but Nick Cage's was pretty bad.
• 13:59
  I mean, Peter Fonda's accent was a lot better than his accent or whatever you would call his acting and ghostwriter
• 14:05
  was his first line of ghostwriter again. Groovy.
• 14:08
  Oh, I thought it was. Hey, that's my horse.
• 14:12
  It's not. No, that was Sam Elliott's first line. My ghost horse.
• 14:17
  But yeah, that was the accent was a bit much.
• 14:20
  It was pretty rough. Kind of sidebar.
• 14:23
  How many like great accents quotation marks have we had here?
• 14:27
  He had his New York cop accent. Oh, yeah. New York cop.
• 14:30
  His New York cop in 9-11 movie was so fucking bad.
• 14:35
  Yeah, but his New York cop when he was pretending to be a cop in Sorcerer's Apprentice was pretty good.
• 14:41
  Yeah. When I was in that was supposed to be more of a caricature.
• 14:44
  Yeah. So Louisiana, New York.
• 14:47
  I don't know. There's others. I didn't do any research on this.
• 14:50
  So fuck it. Fuck you, too. OK, moving on.
• 14:53
  Yeah, no, no, no. His his weird Texas accent.
• 14:56
  His Texas accent and ghostwriter. That was bad. Yeah.
• 15:00
  I know. I was looking at movies that came out around this time,
• 15:03
  and it really does kind of go into my theory that this is him just trying to recoup his lost money
• 15:08
  after he had all the tax problems.
• 15:10
  And I think this is the narrative I'm sticking with, because there's a real specific window of time
• 15:14
  where he makes each of these kinds of movies where they're like, he's making a couple million bucks.
• 15:19
  They don't do very well. It doesn't matter.
• 15:21
  He does a fine job acting, but like nobody gives a shit about these movies.
• 15:25
  And every single poster is him slightly turned mouth, slightly agape.
• 15:30
  Oh, man, that's well.
• 15:32
  Also, one of the first things I noticed about this film, it's the same way that I'm what was that awful one we watched,
• 15:39
  like literally the worst one we've watched left behind.
• 15:43
  No, this one was worse than the behind.
• 15:46
  Did we say something was worse than left behind? I think it was.
• 15:49
  Oh, yeah. Dying of the light. Dying of the light. That was so bad.
• 15:53
  Like a lot of movies he did of that time. And Peter, you pointed out to me earlier.
• 15:57
  This is just a product of that time. I forgot is just both those movies just kind of start an extreme close up of Nick Cage talking,
• 16:04
  like giving a speech and a lot of shaky cam, like no, no steady cams on this,
• 16:09
  which might be explained by the fact that the budget for this movie was only six million dollars and it made ninety three thousand gross.
• 16:18
  Ninety three thousand gross ass dollars.
• 16:21
  Yeah. Pulled from the sweaty bras of Louisiana sex workers.
• 16:27
  You know, I like how you make sure to like slow down your speech and kind of change your cadence whenever you say that.
• 16:35
  So it definitely sounds like we have to read up you.
• 16:39
  It really does. Yeah, it sounds like I'm cutting these in.
• 16:41
  It's like the quack sound. I'm just redubbing myself as I go.
• 16:45
  It's like I really got to slow down on the fly. Live editing in your brain.
• 16:50
  It's how I have to talk to people. This one was a hard one to do a deep dive on because there was literally no information about it.
• 16:56
  I even looked up the director who has three feature films to his name and one of them is in pre-production, which usually a bad sign.
• 17:03
  But then we look at Pig, which had basically the same pedigree. Yeah.
• 17:07
  And that's my favorite film we've watched so far.
• 17:10
  That was a really good movie. Except for Ghost Rider. Right. Which will go all the way until we hit Ghost Rider.
• 17:17
  Spirit of Vengeance. That movie's a banger. Was there anything redeeming about the runner?
• 17:24
  I thought the performances were good. I thought the acting for what it is is good. It's meant to be a very dry.
• 17:29
  There's not a lot of emotion throughout the film. What little like scenes of emotion are when he's calling the woman he's seen at the end after his dad dies.
• 17:38
  There's a genuinely good performance in there.
• 17:40
  And I think you get some real honest, good scenes of regret and everything as Nick Cage is regressing back into alcoholism.
• 17:50
  When he shows up at that bar, it just kind of felt like he knew that this was it. He's just not coming back from it.
• 17:59
  I was expecting a worse performance from him. And the other film we're going to discuss, Leaving Las Vegas, the joke that everyone makes and kind of the joke that we started this podcast with was,
• 18:08
  Oh, Nick Cage, he's in everything. But, you know, he is an astounding actor.
• 18:14
  Even when the material isn't great, he can still put on a performance. I will say he's never forgettable. No, I will say like it's a very subtle role this time.
• 18:24
  He's not. He doesn't really cage out in the movie at all, but it's a it's a really strong, which is funny, because underrated performance, we can just move right into it.
• 18:33
  It's probably one of his cagey is meta cagey is performances because all of the drunk scenes and stuff he prepped for it by getting shit faced, filming himself and then watching the film.
• 18:46
  Oh, now we're talking about leaving Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah. I'm just over the runner now. I'm getting right into.
• 18:51
  Well, here we can just we can connect these two movies right now. Both movies are about alcoholics.
• 18:55
  Yeah, I mean, we're really good at threading this accidentally. Yeah. Here you go. Two alcoholism movies.
• 19:00
  Now, to actually good makeup jobs of the jaundice as the liver fails.
• 19:09
  Mm hmm. Yeah, there was a lot of weird connections, but the deep dive on leaving Las Vegas was astounding.
• 19:16
  And yeah, Nick, you pointed out one of the most interesting things were in peak method actor mode.
• 19:22
  Like the way he studied for this role was by getting blitzed and filming himself so he could learn his own drunken speech patterns. Yeah.
• 19:31
  And he spent time at hospitals with like dying career alcoholics so he could see like look at that thousand yard stare and like this is the shakes, you know, pulling out his own teeth for a role.
• 19:45
  Yeah, tough. Yeah. I mean, Elizabeth Shoe spent time on the strip with sex workers and interviewed sex workers for this role.
• 19:53
  Like they both put in a lot of time and energy and commitment of their own to prepare for these performances.
• 19:59
  And it shows. Yeah, they gave really, really good, honest performances.
• 20:04
  And it really makes sense that both of them were nominated for best performer Oscars for nominations total in the Oscars.
• 20:14
  The ninety six Oscars, Nick Cage, best performing actor, Elizabeth Shoe, best performing actress, best director and best screenplay.
• 20:23
  Weirdly not best film because every other film that was nominated for best screenplay was also nominated for best film.
• 20:30
  Yeah. And it's weird. This movie has been nominated for a lot of things.
• 20:37
  Well, it's I mean, this is what Nicholas Cage won his Oscar for, rightfully so.
• 20:41
  Yeah. And coming out of like a real banger of a year in 94. Yeah.
• 20:46
  Where we've already seen a couple of his movies and are not great.
• 20:50
  So the movie, some of them are really good. Yes.
• 20:53
  So the movie did directly before this was Trapped in Paradise.
• 20:58
  And one of the one of his reasons for doing this film is because he hated that movie so much that he wanted to like go do something the complete opposite.
• 21:07
  Like, well, good on him because he fucking crushed it. So just real quick.
• 21:12
  This movie stars Nicholas Cage as alcoholic, disgraced screenwriter Ben Sanderson pretty much just tanks his career in L.A., burns all of his stuff, puts all of his clothes in trash bags, leaves him on the curb and decides he's going to go to Vegas and drink himself to death.
• 21:27
  Maxing out all of his cards, selling his car. He thinks he can do it in about four weeks.
• 21:32
  That is his plan. Elizabeth Shoe plays a sex worker named Sarah, who meets Ben, like kind of first night there.
• 21:41
  And they form a friendship, a love interest of types. It's very well, it was probably pretty cathartic for her because he wasn't interested in sex throughout.
• 21:52
  Like the majority of the movie sex wasn't his motivation, but that's really the only way she knows to show any affection. And he's not really providing her with that.
• 22:05
  I'm trying to what's a good what's the word? It's a very codependent relationship. Very much like he's, you know, right up like she has a move in with him right away and right out the gate.
• 22:14
  He's just like, you can never tell me to stop drinking. Like you have to let me do this. And that runs its course. Yeah.
• 22:22
  And it's really not until she goes out working one night and he goes out gambling, gets drunk and then brings another sex worker back to her place where the wheels finally come off that relationship.
• 22:34
  No, the making of the film, though. Amazing. Yeah. Like every story about this film is insane and good and bad reasons.
• 22:44
  Like the making of this film also has a lot of sadness behind it. Like the author of the book Committed Suicide, I believe about two weeks into production.
• 22:52
  I rewatched that movie this morning. The last scene of the film is of Ben Sanderson and kind of a in memoriam type, just like freeze frame of him just on the strip, just smiling like after he's died in the movie.
• 23:03
  Like that's a really weird way to end this film. And I'm kind of wondering if that's just a was more meant to be a nod to the author of the book. Yeah.
• 23:12
  I think there were some nice little nods like that watch that he's wearing was the novel author's watch. Oh, that's interesting.
• 23:22
  Yeah. The Rolex Daytona. Yeah. Yeah. The 93 Rolex Daytona, which did you look up the value? Yeah. $20,000 used 20 grand. Yeah. Yeah. And he sells it for $500 at a pawn shop.
• 23:34
  I did love that after he sells that there's at least one, I think two other times where he goes and like looks at his watch just so naturally and it's just not there.
• 23:45
  And he's, you know, he's drunk and it's just like, oh, no, don't know what fucking time it is because I sold that there's only one other named re really named character in this film who has even a monochrome of screen time, which is Yuri played by Julian Sands, who is Sarah's pimp at the beginning of this film.
• 24:03
  Who's running to some money problems with some Russian mobsters and they quickly take him out of the film. Yeah, he's not in it for too long.
• 24:11
  I'm not sure there was even a necessary element to that. Like, why did they even bother with him? Just to show where Sarah's kind of starting out in her relationship with the like only other man in her life.
• 24:22
  Yeah, and the abuse of being a sex worker because he used to like cut her butt and things like that. Like we see her get down with a few people in this film and it's always a performance and she talks about that and kind of one of her first talking head scenes.
• 24:39
  She talks about like the performance of being a sex worker and the one scene we see of her having sex is not a performance with is with Yuri.
• 24:47
  And it is you can just see interface just how awful it is for her just to go to that character again. Those talking head scenes are astounding.
• 24:58
  They're really something weird because they were pre production hair, makeup and costuming.
• 25:04
  Yeah, they were screen tests and then the director decided to put them in even though the producers were like, I don't know about that.
• 25:11
  Yeah, fuck it. Do it. But like they really do kind of emphasize the scenes that they get paired up with.
• 25:18
  It's also just for me it was kind of it took me out a little bit because it's so jarring. It goes to like at home hand cam kind of appearance.
• 25:29
  Like, you know, it doesn't have professional lighting and sound and it's it's also kind of weird because it makes you think like, is she talking to a therapist?
• 25:38
  Is she talking to a friend? Yeah, and it's never specified. But no, yet they show up pretty heavy in the first act and you don't see them throughout the second act.
• 25:46
  And you only get one more at the very end of the film. I kind of forgot they were a thing until it shows up at the end.
• 25:51
  Yeah, it's they're fine as little like personal monologues, but it's also kind of weird because it's like, I don't feel like she's the lead and I don't know if you can give those to not leads.
• 26:03
  I mean, she's the female lead of one. I mean, but notable females.
• 26:08
  I mean, the movie is about Ben dying, but I would put Elizabeth the shoes care.
• 26:12
  I would put Sarah as more of like the lead and the narrator of this film because she's the one witnessing it.
• 26:18
  Like, she's who we're seeing this through. Well, she's certainly the more empathetic character.
• 26:22
  I mean, it's hard to watch a guy who's just like kind of a sad sack drink himself to death.
• 26:27
  We don't get any buildup of him as a character to give a shit about.
• 26:31
  It's just sort of like, I am a drunk. Even there's certainly no satisfaction in his character.
• 26:35
  Even the opening scene of him like dancing through the grocery store, just putting handles of liquor in the shopping cart.
• 26:43
  That was meant to be a later scene when he's already decided to kill himself. But again, the director just like this sets us up perfectly for who this character is in one shot.
• 26:52
  Yeah, I felt lied to because that scene opens up the movie or whatever.
• 26:57
  And I'm like, all right, got ourselves a little fucking romp here. We're going to have a nice like pick me up movie. I'm going to enjoy this.
• 27:05
  No, next scene, he's begging for money from like a producer friend of his from Richard Lewis from Richard Lewis, who's having dinner with Steven Webber from Wings.
• 27:15
  Yeah, this movie had two nice ladies to definitely weren't sex workers.
• 27:20
  This movie has such a weird cast.
• 27:24
  There are so many fucking people in this movie who are just from out of nowhere and enrolls like French Stewart, businessman number two.
• 27:32
  I rewatching it, I still couldn't see him in this film.
• 27:35
  Oh, well, you didn't see him actually on screen. I don't think he had a line.
• 27:40
  Was he just there squinting? Yeah, he was just there squinting. He is like a shave, like short.
• 27:44
  I just missed him. I mean, I'm sure he had to be.
• 27:47
  He probably had a line at one point, otherwise I wouldn't credit him for just being in the background.
• 27:50
  Another weird one, the bartender in the biker bar.
• 27:53
  I didn't like I recognize him and I was just staring at this guy's face the whole scene.
• 27:56
  I'm like, who the fuck is that guy? It's Julian Lennon.
• 27:59
  It's John Lennon's son. Yeah. So, yeah, there's just a lot of weird people in this movie.
• 28:05
  The director, Mike Higgs, who's directed a bunch of stuff I've never heard of.
• 28:12
  I mean, there were some things I think I'd heard of, like I'm just going to say words.
• 28:17
  Cold Mountain Creek. Oh, Cold Creek Manor. I was pretty close.
• 28:22
  Oh, so did you see that the way he kept putting his production company into the movie on the taxis,
• 28:30
  where you'd see the little red mullet? Yeah. The like car tent or whatever the topper.
• 28:36
  I didn't I didn't catch that was the production company.
• 28:38
  I definitely saw that a bunch of times. I was like, it's some in-joke. That's the director.
• 28:42
  Yeah, that's his production company.
• 28:44
  And then it's just a photo of him next to it looking extra skeevy.
• 28:48
  And it's like, Jesus. Well, OK, it comes up like two, two times.
• 28:52
  Yeah, you see, I think you see it twice, but it stands out every time.
• 28:54
  It's main. That's the focus of the shot.
• 28:57
  This movie did a great job of depicting Vegas as it really looks.
• 29:01
  And that's shitty as fuck. Yeah. Like, I mean, a lot of it takes a go in a month.
• 29:06
  A lot of it takes place off the strip. It takes place in just Las Vegas, which is just a desert city.
• 29:10
  But like, there's a lot of over the city shots during the day.
• 29:14
  And I'm like, that is not a pretty town. Well, a lot of things in Las Vegas are prettier with the lights out.
• 29:23
  That's a sex worker joke. Yeah, I got it.
• 29:28
  One of my only other notes was that there are so many cleavage shots. Oh, yeah.
• 29:33
  Yeah. Like they heavy on the cleavage. It was nice.
• 29:36
  The slow, I don't know, salacious pans up and down.
• 29:41
  Jesus Christ, how's that for me? Sex is not absent in this movie.
• 29:45
  No. Again, you know, we've seen Nick Cage hump a lot.
• 29:49
  And I just based on like the 22 films we've seen already, I'm assuming we're going to see him hump a lot more.
• 29:55
  Just going back to the way this movie was filmed and like all the weird things they had to do to get it done.
• 30:01
  Most of the shots on the strip are a single take, a single scene, because they were not permitted to film on the strip.
• 30:07
  So they were all set up to just be kind of quick, one and done shots so they can get out of Dodge before the cop showed up.
• 30:13
  So a bit of guerrilla filmmaking. I kind of love that.
• 30:16
  I mean, because I also hate the cops. So yeah, yeah.
• 30:19
  We need an obligatory fuck the police in all of these episodes.
• 30:22
  Did we even have a cop in this film? Is there a cop? No, no cops.
• 30:26
  I mean, no, no Nick Cage cops, certainly. Oh, yeah.
• 30:29
  I don't think any cops. Oh, nice. That's refreshing.
• 30:33
  Cop free episode. Too bad it couldn't have been more of a romp.
• 30:37
  Oh, Mike Figgs composed the score for this film. I think it's Figgis. Figgis? Oh, sorry.
• 30:42
  There's a second eye. Yeah, Figgis composed the score for this film and played trumpet on the soundtrack on the score.
• 30:48
  Yeah. Oh, I forgot my I forgot my joke for how this movie starts.
• 30:51
  There's an intro sting with Sting. There's too much sting. There's a lot of sting.
• 30:57
  I fucking hate the song.
• 31:00
  The music I thought actually was pretty shitty and it kind of took me out of the entire thing.
• 31:05
  Yeah, I did not like the directing.
• 31:09
  It's it's a decision. There's a lot of creative decisions.
• 31:15
  Again, it's a very personal. I feel like it's a very personal and voyeuristic film.
• 31:18
  And I feel the directing really does hammer that home.
• 31:22
  Even his one big freak out. One of the few shots where we see them from afar is in the casino when he has his freak out.
• 31:29
  And we kind of see like from a bird's eye view, almost from like security kind of view of him losing his shit and like like knocking over a waitress and toppling a card table.
• 31:40
  But all the other shots are real personal and real close. And like, I don't know, I feel like it gets the it gets the voyeuristic view.
• 31:49
  Right. I like the cinematography a lot. Yeah. Some fun Oscar facts about this film.
• 31:54
  So Nick Cage was the only person to win from this movie. One best Oscar beat out Sean Penn that year, who was in racing with the moon with him.
• 32:03
  Also beat out Anthony Hopkins. Yeah, that was a stacked year. Yeah. Oh, it was a great year.
• 32:09
  Three million six hundred dollars to film. Not a huge budget. Three million six hundred or three million six hundred thousand six hundred thousand.
• 32:17
  OK, yeah. So that's weird to just throw in six hundred dollars at the end of three million. It's like here's three million. You're right. And cab fare.
• 32:24
  It made it made thirty two million gross. So did I mean, especially at that time when you don't really have to consider for doubling budget nominated for Oscars, one best actor nominated best director.
• 32:38
  Nicholas Cage on the director made no money from this. The studio was just like didn't make enough money for your for your back end. So the man's Oscar, he was not paid for his Oscar, his Oscar winning performance.
• 32:49
  I mean, it wasn't even much that he was supposed to get paid. This came up recently on the Internet.
• 32:56
  I think it was like, I'm probably way off, like a hundred grand or some shit like that. He was making dirt money for this movie and didn't even make that. Yeah.
• 33:06
  Off a movie that made thirty six million. So all our griping at the beginning of this podcast didn't clue you in clearly.
• 33:17
  The runner one. Yeah, I mean, it was easily the most watchable. We loved it.
• 33:24
  No, I can't even tell that my joke doesn't have any legs. No, it's leaving Las Vegas. Yeah, it's I mean, it's a great film. I'm glad I finally saw because I did not see it before this, but it's not something I would seek out again anytime soon just because it is hard to watch.
• 33:42
  There is brutal depictions of alcoholism. You can you really see the mania in his character, the ups, the downs, amazing performance from everyone, especially French Stewart. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 33:55
  He did his best squint. He brought his a squint. I couldn't get out of my head him as Charlie Kaufman.
• 34:04
  Like, I felt that that character and this one were so similar. I mean, they both don't have hair plugs. Yeah, they were definitely both some of his most there is best character roles by far from an acting standpoint, from what we've seen.
• 34:20
  I mean, he's just so confident all the time. Actually, he's so confident until like the very end. I feel like because he's always saying like how good he is in bed and how like you're going to love fucking me and things like that.
• 34:36
  And he's like really laying it on. But then in the end, he's like just getting kind of morose and talking to Sarah and she was talking about like having sex and he just says he's not very good in bed.
• 34:51
  And it's just like so sad, dude. That's more than just the core of who you are. So the first scene we see him drinking, he's hitting on a woman at a bar.
• 35:00
  And he was just like, let's go home, put on a movie. I'll make you like I'll make you a slushy frozen drink and we'll have sex. The bartender comes up and tells him to stop and he just gets real quiet and solemn.
• 35:11
  Like you're so pretty and and I want to have sex with you and I'm really good at it. It gets like you see he does such a great job and turns on a dime of those people who drink that much and where that disassociated with everything like the highs, the lows.
• 35:27
  Just such a good performance. Yeah. This has been a fucking laugh riot. You have to see me struggle say words like sex worker. You did. You made it though.
• 35:36
  There's a sex worker in every movie. I'm sure. I mean, he does hump a lot in his movies. We have had very few other than the Disney ones that weren't hump city.
• 35:46
  Yeah. Oh, we did get a little bit of Nicolas Cage stroking in this room. This makes movie number three with Nick Cage masturbating. Also very, very Charlie Kaufman. Yeah. The most Charlie Kaufman thing he does mostly due to the subject matter.
• 36:01
  We didn't really do quotes for this episode, but I did have one. Oh, God. No, I lost it. All right. Nick, Pat for a minute.
• 36:08
  Wackety schmackety doo. Looking at quotes on IMDb. You didn't write shit down because you're not prepared like me. What's your quote, Nick?
• 36:22
  Whoopsie. When he falls through a glass table. I'm a prickly pear. I'm a prickly pear. I'm sorry. I'm to be people who write these quotes.
• 36:32
  I just found giving you money makes me want to come. They spelled it C-O-M-E. Yeah, they might have rules about not spelling it.
• 36:43
  That seems weird. I mean, I've definitely read a fair amount of like, I don't know, late 70s, early 80s erotica and stuff. And it's it's been spelled both ways.
• 36:55
  I do. OK, I did really like the line. So when he goes to move in with Sarah, he's packing up his apartment, is pouring whatever brown liquor he can into a pint glass into like a 20 ounce pint glass.
• 37:07
  All the short bottles go into a glass. He like goes to pack all his clothes. Well, he packs all the bottles first and goes to pack his clothes and then he can't close it.
• 37:17
  So when he shows up at Sarah's place, his suitcase is clinking and he says how the shirt she buys and will go really good with his suit, which is his only pair of clothing.
• 37:27
  And she's like, what did you do with your clothes? I threw them out, which was perhaps immoral. But I wanted to come to you clean, so to speak.
• 37:37
  Thought we'd go shopping, pick out a pair of jeans and 45 pairs of underwear. Just throw one out each day.
• 37:45
  That's the goal. I do love the feel of unworn underwear just in my hands. I like to run it between my fingers.
• 37:53
  Oh, and then, of course, the quote when he's after getting in a bar fight, but he comes back to Sarah's place and he's you know, the landlords love him being there, but he's like covered in like his face is covered in dried blood.
• 38:04
  His shirt's covered in dried blood. And as he's walking by the landlord, the woman, he just goes great ass. Yeah, she's bent over like doing some gardening. Lots of sexual harassment in this. Yeah.
• 38:18
  Sometimes a great ass just has to be commented on. As a construction worker, I know this to be true. It's classic. Yeah. You know, I felt more connected to this character.
• 38:30
  One of my favorite memories of when I lived in one of my one of my all time. One of my all time favorite memories is when I still lived in San Francisco when I was a wee lad, I was of 22. I was crossing the street in the mission.
• 38:43
  And this sassy black construction worker was like directing traffic was just like, whoa, shake it, baby. I'm like, oh, you.
• 38:53
  Rachel Rachel likes getting catcalled. She's like, I do look good today.
• 39:01
  Do you guys have anything else to kind of wrap this up? Put a bow on it or I see why you won the Oscar. Very well deserved.
• 39:08
  I want to watch the movie that Susan Sarandon won the Oscar for just because I want to see the performance that beat Elizabeth.
• 39:14
  It's a good movie. I can't remember Sarandon's. I believe she's a nun. So, yes, still stands. Yeah. Oh, OK.
• 39:23
  I do have one. I do have a story to close this episode out on. So this movie ends with a dying Nicholas Cage jacking off, receiving a hand job, and then Elizabeth Shue finally mounting his dying body so she can finally have the sex with them that he's denied her this whole film.
• 39:41
  It's the last three minutes of film. And at this point in the after watching this two hour film is when my roommate Hayden walks in the room like what comes back home, opens the door and is like, what are you doing?
• 39:53
  I'm like watching a Nick Cage movie for the podcast and proceeds to just loom behind me over me for this entire scene.
• 40:01
  And I'm like, this is worse than if my parents walked in. You know, he was just trying to be supportive.
• 40:07
  He was waiting in case he needed to like hug it out afterwards. I understand. After I watch Nick Cage kids as rocks off, I got it. I got to hug it out. I need body to body pressure.
• 40:18
  Peter, how did you how did you say he died? We can make sure that jokes in here.
• 40:23
  Oh, yeah, he definitely dies coming to death. And I feel like that freeze frame of him smiling on the strip should have just been him giving a thumbs up and look on his face.
• 40:31
  I just had sex and now I'm dead.
• 40:37
  I once after after seeing Shazam with a lady when we were back at her place, I climaxed and yelled Shazam and immediately got slapped.
• 40:46
  Oh, man. Worth it. See, that was the wrong lady.
• 40:49
  I've had a couple of really good end of sex. Sting.
• 40:53
  Even if I wasn't done, I was just like sex is over. We're not doing this anymore. Like one time I did the Final Fantasy seven like battle music like finishing.
• 41:04
  Do do do do do do do do do. I just laid down going to do do do do.
• 41:12
  Incredible. One time I gave her the Spider-Man.
• 41:16
  I'm just like, all right. Thank you, everybody, for listening to.
• 41:24
  Oh, what I'm hoping is a great episode. Yeah, we'll see how it all shakes out.
• 41:28
  So next episode, we've got color out of space, which looks like a really wacky one.
• 41:32
  I'm excited for that one. And looking glass, which I have already forgotten what it is.
• 41:36
  And we talked about it like a week ago. Never heard of it. Yeah.
• 41:39
  So except for all the times we've definitely talked about it. Yeah, it's in the fucking weird category.
• 41:43
  So these are going to be pretty bizarre. Oh, all right. Well, thanks.
• 41:48
  I would like to just one more shout out to all our patrons, which I will read out now.
• 41:52
  Josh and other Sean. Oh, there, Sean. Is he actually on the patron?
• 41:56
  Well, he is. Is that going to be a monthly five bucks?
• 42:01
  Hey, monthly five bucks. Schedule that shit. Yeah.
• 42:04
  Come on, the Patreon. Then you'll get a shout out. Otherwise, fuck you.
• 42:07
  Thanks, John. Non non working on this podcast.
• 42:11
  Now, Sean, we love you.
• 42:13
  Also, please like and share this because we don't pay for advertising.
• 42:16
  And we would love to have more people hear our sultry tones.
• 42:20
  Oh, and comment in the bottom. Your favorite movie boobs.
• 42:25
  I want to hear about them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Movie boobs in the comments.
• 42:29
  Also timestamps so we can. Yeah, we want this to be Mr. Skin.
• 42:35
  Oh, man. You were wrong, Nick. This wasn't as bad as the 9-11 episode.
• 42:39
  Yeah, 9-11 episode was a rougher. Good night, everybody.
• 42:42
  We love you, Nick Cage.
• 42:46
  Do you need more faces? At some point, you're just going to have a huge folder of our faces.
• 42:50
  You'll never have to ask. Oh, man.
• 42:53
  If Nick and I ever wind up dead for any reason and your computer is ever checked, like this guy had a weird obsession with these two.
• 43:00
  Yeah. If there's ever a deep fake of me on the Internet, I want the police to know that it was probably done by you.
• 43:08
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 43:12
  I will tell you, any movie that has like a solid, tit sucking scene will always be ingrained in my brain, because the first time I ever saw anything like that was The Highlander.
• 43:21
  And every theatrical Highlander movie has one of these scenes for some reason.
• 43:24
  So if I ever see a tit sucking scene in an actual film, it's it just immediately goes in my brain is like, there's one of the first good movie.
• 43:32
  Yeah. Also, I mean, Elizabeth Schew. Yeah.
• 43:37
  Her boobs were a shoe in for the.
• 43:42
  But she like she spent time that all this has to get cut out.
• 43:45
  I really want that one in there.
• 43:47
  You. It's still a comedy podcast.
• 43:49
  We're allowed to make jokes. Yeah, but I don't think I should be sexualizing people like that.
• 43:54
  I don't know. But Elizabeth, you spent time on my apology out.
• 43:59
  Put the joke in. I'm not even sorry.
• 44:03
  OK, that's our outro.