Kick-Ass
An average New York teenager decides to put on a costume and fight crime. Cage plays Damon Macready, also known as Big Daddy, mentor to Hit Girl. Also staring Chloe Moretz and Lyndsy Fonseca.
If I was going to be a superhero, I don’t know what kind of a costume I would choose.
Knowing
Knowing is a science fiction disaster film directed by Alex Proyas and starring Cage, who plays an astrophysicist at MIT in the film.
I grew up with a professor, so that was all the research I ever needed.
August Coppola, his father, was a professor of comparative literature at Cal State Long Beach.
National Treasure
Cage plays Benjamin Gates who must follow a clue left in John Wilkes Booth’s diary to prove his ancestor’s innocence in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Cage co-stars with Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha.
History is a world treasure and people seem to have picked up on that fact so I’d like to think that people around the world are interested in that. It is also good because it is based in our time not past or future but now.
Adaptation.
Cage plays the dual roles of Charlie and Donald Kaufman in this dramedy directed by Spike Jonze and written by Susan Orlean, Charlie Kaufman and his fictitious twin Donald Kaufman. Initially meant to be a straightforward adaptation of The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, the movie is instead a surreal take on the difficulty Charlie Kaufman had in writing that adaptation. Co-starring Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.
Access to Charlie definitely helped me shape my character. I think there are two Charlies. There’s the biological Charlie we have here, and then there’s the surrealistic Charlie, which is on the paper and in the movie. Spike and I together decided that we wanted to use the biological Charlie as a resource, in terms of interviews and examining his characteristics and the way he speaks, the way he thinks.
Raising Arizona
A petty thief played by Cage and the police woman who keeps arresting him fall in love and decide to start a family. When they discover they can’t have babies, they steal one from a furniture mogul who has just sired a set of quintuplets. This film stars Cage, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman.
I was impressed by their preparation. By their writing, I saw echos of other writers I admired and just how funny they were. They just kill me. Its like a bottomless they’re just funny.
