Never On Tuesday (1989)

Welcome back, all you Cage Fanatics!

It’s been a minute since the last post. Life gets busy every once in a while and sometimes my other responsibilities supersede even Nicolas Cage. I’d apologize, but fuck you – this blog is free and I don’t owe you anything. I barely get any hits here anyway. I bet you’re not even reading this right now. You’re probably looking at porn. You disgust me.

 True Love.

So this week I watched a movie called Never On Tuesday. Here’s the trailer, since chances are you’ve never heard of it:

Um...yea...I couldn't find a trailer. Sorry. Just look at the damn poster and pretend it's moving, okay?

So based off the picture above, I suspect you're thinking something along the lines of "Wait a minute here, where the hell is Nicolas Cage?"

Well here’s the thing...Mr. Cage only has a cameo in this movie. That's it! One teeny, tiny, twiney, twinny, twippy, twoppy, woppey, popey little scene. But let me tell you – IT’S A FUCKIN’ SWEET CAMEO! I know all you Cage-o-philes are dying to see it, so let me save you the trouble of queuing this horseshit up on your Netflix and just show you the scene in its entirety:

Boom! I watched this whole dumb movie just for that one little clip.

Pretty cool nose prosthetic though.

According to IMDB, Cage’s character is named Man in Red Sports Car, which I assume is because he’s a man and he’s in a red sports car. It also lists him as “uncredited” - although how “uncredited” can you be if you’re listed on IMDB? It’s like, we all know it’s you Cage. Even with that fake-ass schnozz on. No amount of make-up can hide your trademark overacting, dude:

So this movie is about these two guys, Matt and Eddie (Andrew Lauer and Peter Berg) on this cross-country trip from somewhere on the East Coast to the sunny beaches of California. There they plan to spend the rest of their vacation checking out the bikini babes because, apparently, they’ve never seen a set of boobs and taking a 2500-mile trek is the most logical way to remedy that. They’re driving through the desert when they get into a head-on collision with another car driven by this bodacious 80s babe named Tuesday (Claudia Christian). The three of them are now stuck in the desert and since no one has a cell phone they’re just gonna sit there and wait to die under the unforgiving southwestern sun. Luckily Cage shows up just in time to mock them for getting into an accident before driving off again. One by one, a whole bunch of 80s film and television staples stop by to mock the 3 accident victims – Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Gilbert Gottfried, Judd Nelson.

....wait a second...Gilbert Gottfried? What the fuck?

Anyway, nobody helps them. And instead of being rescued the two boys pretty much just fantasize about banging Tuesday the whole time. And then the movie ends.

Crappily Ever After

So this movie seems like a slice of good ol’ fashioned screwball fun, but that’s because the filmmakers were focusing too much on the titties and ignoring the darker existential questions this movie poses.  Never On Tuesday got me thinking about myself and how I might react in a dire life and death situation such as this. If I were stranded in the desert too, with my best buddy and some random hottie, what would I say? Think? Do?

Pondering Life's BIG Questions...

Well, for starters, my buddy is obviously Nicolas Cage in this scenario. We’re coked up to the gills, riding across the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah, the top down on the convertible, shirts off. Pants off, too. Why not? It’s the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah. Ain’t no one around to tell us no.

So Nic looks over and accidentally sees my GIANT WIENER, and while basking in its heavenly and radiant glow, he loses control of the car and smashes it head-first into another car driven by none other than pop music mega-star KATY PERRY! Luckily, her airbags were deployed and are now sitting there all luscious on the front of her chest so she’s not even hurt. In case you didn’t get that last joke, let me clarify: I’m saying her boobs are airbags.

 

Nic and I slap high-five, jumping into the air and kicking both our legs up as we do it. What luck! We were on an odyssey to see some boobs anyway, and fortuitously, a pair of super-famous, super-nice ta-ta’s just fell into our laps! All we had to do was drive with reckless and egregious negligence! Let that be a lesson to all you kids out there. If you want girls to notice you, hit them with your car.

But now here’s the problem – who gets the first crack at hitting on Katy? Should it be Nic Cage, because of his movie star status? Or should it be me because of that GIANT WIENER thing I mentioned two paragraphs ago? But hey, this is the 80s, and Nic and I are modern guys and we believe in women’s lib and all that stuff so instead of flipping a coin (which we forgot to bring anyway!) we ask Katy:

“Hey Katy, who would you like to sleep with first?” Nic asks her.

“I’m a lesbian,” she says.

“d’AWAAAAAH?” Nic and I say in unison.

Then she goes on her iPhone pulls up her video for "I Kissed a Girl" on YouTube.

“Hey! Where’d you get that future phone?” Nic says.

“Mr. Cage, this is not a 'future phone.' It’s not the 1980s anymore. I don't know why you keep saying that,” she says. “If it were the 80s, I'd still be a little kid. I was only 5 when this stupid Never On Tuesday movie came out. The year is 2013. Everyone has an iPhone. Even orphans. And besides, none of this is really happening anyway. It's all just a bad joke on some dude's dumb blog."

We have a good laugh. She calls a tow truck. Movie ends.

What I saying before? Oh yeah, existential questions. Here we go: How long do you think we’d be stranded before Katy and I started eating Nicolas Cage? I can’t really speak for her (Ms. Perry, please feel free to send me an email answering this question) but for myself I’d give it a good solid 2 hours before I started chowing down on Cage’s creamy hamstring.

Look, don't judge me. I’m not the monster here. I just have a very strict diet. I’m pretty sure you can eat human flesh and still be a vegetarian, right?

 

2 Cageheads out of 5.

Vampire's Kiss (1988)

Vampire's Kiss

Holy. Fucking. Shitballs.

Did you watch that trailer? If you didn’t, please stop reading this and go watch that trailer. I’ll wait...

...

Done?

Okay. Now to imagine what this movie is like, take what you saw in that trailer there and picture it for an hour and forty minutes. I’ll wait...

...

Just kidding. You think I’m gonna sit here for an hour and forty minutes and wait for you? I’ve got shit to do. People to see. Cage movies to watch. Plus you don’t even need to use your imagination because some kind and benevolent soul has taken the liberty of uploading the whole goddamn movie to YouTube.

A whole movie for free on YouTube? Why has no studio claimed copyright infringement? I mean, in this era of the multi-eyed internet, how can you just throw a pirated copy of a movie up on a free video hosting site without catching the attention of at least somebody involved? But apparently it happened.  My guess is that no one associated in the making of this film wants to admit to having anything to do with it. Which is a damn shame because THIS IS ONE OF THE CAGE-IEST MOVIE EVER MADE!

Here’s another video, full of a bunch of ridiculous moments from this movie, just in case those caps locks in the last paragraph aren’t getting my point across:

Man, the 80’s were a weird time for cinema. And humanity in general. But mostly for cinema. In what other decade could a movie like this possibly exist? It’s like a satire that isn’t really satirizing anything. Let me attempt to recant the “plot” to you now: Nicolas Cage plays Peter Loew - an 80's business guy who likes to walk around NYC and be all 80's and shit. One night he meets a seductive young lady named Rachel who turns out to be a vampire. She bites his neck. Cage starts to slowly lose his mind, thinking he's changing into a vampire too. But he's actually not. He's just crazy. Then there's some other dramatic shit that happens with his secretary that is sort've hard to follow and really doesn't have any bearing on anything. The movie is sorta like American Psycho, except starring Nicolas Cage and it's about vampires.

But none of that matters.

The story is a rambling, borderline insane string of disjointed scenes that seem to exist for no other reason than to showcase how fucking over-the-top Nicolas Cage can be.

What the - ?

Nicolas Cage?!? What the hell are you doing here in my blog? And you’re still in the character of Peter Loew from Vampire’s Kiss? Sweet! Although I think my readers would like to get to know the “real” you.

You certainly did not! We’re all friends here, aren’t we?

Well...I mean...I suppose we can adopt...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Nicolas Cage, you put your clothes back on this instant! This isn’t Cage’s Palace O’ Love! It’s a respectable-goddamn-blog on the internet. My mom could be reading this.

Hey, it’s understandable. I’m a good-looking dude.

But, listen, Nic, my readers want to know more about this movie here. Perhaps you have some insight you’d like to share with us. What was it like filming Vampire’s Kiss?

That bad?

Okay. Look, I’m not trying to pry, but to have you visit us here in screencap version, it’s pretty exciting. It’s not every day we get pictures of celebrities coming in here to talk to us. Mainly because pictures don't talk. Now do you want to apologize?

It’s cool, Cagey-pants. I forgive you.

Awwww. You’re a gem. A gem of the silver screen! Now speaking of the silver screen, let me ask you this question, in regards to the plot of this movie *ahem* WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!

No. You need to explain yourself. You’re going to win an Oscar one day. What the fuck were you thinking?

Are you cursing at me? Jesus. You goddamn Hollywood elitists are all the same. You think you can come in here in shit down everyone’s throat? You think you can pop up on my webpage, uninvited, and belittle me and boss me around? Why would I do anything you say?

I ain’t doing shit. Not with that attitude.

Ya, you already said that, like, three panels up. Repeat yourself much? Hahaha. And anyway, what are you talking about? You came in here and interrupted me?!

My God. You’re on drugs, aren’t you? Is that why you did this movie?

...bite your tongue! We will not have language like that on this blog. We refer to cunts only by nice names, like pussies or twats. I’m – I’m glad you stopped by Nic, but this conversation has totally derailed and I have a post to finish. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.

Yes. It’s the end. Do you have anything you’d like to say before you go, possibly about me and how thrilled you are I've dedicated this whole blog to you?

Nicolas Cage, ladies and gentlemen!

Okay, before I wrap this post up, I want to take a moment to let you know about an epiphany that I had while I was in the middle of viewing Vampire’s Kiss:

Watching the evolution of Cage, in the chronological order that I’ve been, it is becoming increasingly clear what is so magnanimous about this actor. Why people are always talking about him. Why he inspires literally THOUSANDS OF MEME’S that are clogging up the arties of the internet like hamburger grease as we speak. It is his willingness to commit, ham-fisted or not, to the source material – however inane, silly, or sometimes brilliant that may be. I think there is something liberating about watching someone who not only brings his all, but something that is so quintessentially “him” to a role as goofy as that of ­­Peter Loew in Vampire’s Kiss. Nicolas Cage is a guy who is telling us that not only is there art in this schlock, but he’s almost mocking us for not acknowledging it in the first place. Looking at this movie and beyond, you can clearly see there are seeds here that he’s going to continue to water throughout his career. Something about this speaks as a true artist, Cage taking on the challenge of amalgamating a character as ridiculous as Loew into him and transforming it (almost as one might transform into a vampire) into an wholly original and completely memorable performance.

Say what you will about the plot of this movie, Nicolas Cage fuckin’ OWNED IT!

5 Cageheads out of 5.

(And I would like to thank the lovely Miss Erika Instead for taking the time to nab all those screencaps I used in my “conversation” with Nic. THANKS ERIKA! YOU’RE THE BEST!)  

Moonstruck (1987)

moon-struck [moon-struhk]
adj.
1. mentally deranged, supposedly by the influence of the moon; crazed
2. dreamily romantic or bemused

So that’s the dictionary definition of Moonstruck, and certainly it is an affliction suffered by most of the characters in this movie. F’real. Everybody is fuckin’ everybody in this film. It’s like a big, happy, romantic adulterous orgy. Nicolas Cage is banging Cher who is engaged to Danny Aiello, Cher’s mom considers getting some from this weinery dude with a penchant for getting drinks dumped on him in restaurants who also happens to be Frasier's dad, and her dad, Mr. Mushnik, is slipping the pickle to some older babe who isn't Cher. I bet even the dude playing the grandpa was choking the chicken in the scenes between the scenes. Point is, there was a lot of sex in this movie. No nudity though. I thought we should’ve been treated to a crack shot or two from Cage. I mean, he wasn’t afraid to show butt in Rumble Fish, he certainly shouldn’t have been afraid to show it in this Academy Award winning movie.

That’s right. Moonstruck won several Academy Awards in the year it came out, and it’s pretty easy to see why. This shit was a good movie. It was funny with a tint of darkness and heartwarming without being cheap. Plus Cher is a good fuggin’ actress. I suppose people from my generation really consider Cher to be more of...I don’t know...an inspiration for gay dudes to prance around in assless chaps.

Fabulous!

But the homosexual community has got the right idea. This chick rocks. She’s a good actress and she was not bad looking and she deserves all the exposed butt-cheeked dance routines in the world as tribute for all that she has brought mankind. Man, if I was just a little bit gayer, I’d be rocking a pair of biker shorts and singing to some horny sailor boys right now.

Alas, though, this is Nicolas Uncaged, and we’re here to talk about the man himself, Nicolas Cage and not what I’d do as a female impersonator.

Here’s a tidbit that I pulled right off of IMDB’s trivia page: 

Nicolas Cage's screen test didn't impress the studio, and they wanted to get someone else to play Ronny. But Cher insisted that Cage was the one to play that role, and threatened to quit unless he was hired. After a few days, the studio relented.

So that's ANOTHER reason why Cher rules. She's a total Cage fan too! Hey Cher, if you're reading this right now and you want to do a guest post some time, I'd be totally cool with that.

Here’s a song that encapsulates what it’s like to be in love, Italian-style:

 

Skip to 1:45 for a bonus treat of Cage delivering a line in only the way Nicolas Cage can.

You gotta "hand" it to him, that was some fancy acting. 

So, here’s a question this film indirectly asks:

Can we really choose who we love?

In the film, Cher is a 37-year-old widow with a chip on her shoulder who believes in curses. She’s agrees to marry Danny Aiello because he’s a decent guy, has some cash, and he’s apparently into 37-year-old widows with chips on their shoulders. Circumstances send Aiello to Sicily to tend to his dying mother. In the intrim, he asks Cher to convince his estranged brother (Nic Cage) to attend the wedding. Cher tracks Cage down and they pretty much have sex immediately because of true love and all that shit.

So here's what I'm wondering: Should Cher feel bad about cheating on her hubs-to-be? I mean, arguably that’s some scum-bag maneuvering, sliding up on Cage’s pole like that, but it all worked out for the best in the end, right? The real question I suppose is what exactly is true love and is that what we should be looking for?

Here’s some more dictionary definitions for your face:

true-love [troo-luhv]
noun
a sweetheart; a truly loving or loved person

Uh....gee...that was helpful....

My point here is  that everyone always says you should follow your heart, but is following your heart an adequate reason to disregard someone else’s feelings? Think of Cher and Cage in this movie. Like, even if her fiancee wasn’t that into her, it’s still gotta feel shitty to get cheated on. And it is still ethically wrong. And a total dick thing to do. And if a major part of being intimate with someone is being physically intimate with that person how do you know it’s ‘true love’ pushing you there or just the fact you wanna get your parts wet with someone else who looks good? Because, Jeez, if that were the case, I experience true love, like, 15 times a day.

The fact that it doesn’t offer up a maudlin answer to this "true love" question is what made this movie so good. Maybe there really isn’t a differnece between true love and true sex. Maybe we’re all in some kind of flux, at the whims of our waxing and waning emotional states, trapped between our desire to love and be loved and our desire to fuck and get fucked alike. It'd almost be poetic, if it weren’t so damn sad.

Hmmm. I don’t know if there were enough jokes in this post. Goddamnit. I should’ve talked more about gay dudes and Cher’s butt.

4 Cageheads out of 5.

Raising Arizona (1987)

We're back!

Welcome to Nicolas Uncaged, the only blog on the internet that doesn’t have those recently-leaked pictures of Justin Bieber’s penis.

You clicked on that Bieber penis link, didn’t you? You dirty bird…

This week we are going to be discussing a classic slice of American indie cinema, the one and only, Raising Arizona.

Before we get into the meat of this post (or rather, let the meat of this post into us) I first want to take a paragraph or two to talk about how awesome I think this movie is, just in general. What? I’m not allowed to dispense with the sarcasm for a moment and actually talk about a movie because I enjoyed it? It doesn’t have to be ALL jokes ALL the time, does it?

Oh, it does?

Goddamn it.

Okay, did you watch that clip? Dude, this movie is so much freaking fun! I must’ve seen it at least a dozen times before watching it for Nicolas Uncaged. The slickness of the direction, the pace of the story, the fullness of the characters, the dryness of the humor, the subtly of the performances (Nicolas Cage’s in particular was most certainly a career-defining role and I find it almost unimaginable to picture a different actor in his place and have it be remotely the same movie) and the pitch perfectness of the music – ALL OF IT – make for a piece of art that towers like a monolith above most other films. Especially The Boy in Blue. Goddamn, that movie sucked.

So in case you somehow missed this film 1.) fuck you, you shouldn't be allowed to watch movies, and 2.) here’s a quick recap: Nic Cage plays H.I. McDunnough, a serial felon who spends a lot of his time getting locked up in jail because he's apparently terrible at his job of robbing convenience stores. While being processed into prison, he meets a cop lady named Edwina ‘Ed’ McDunnough played by Holly Hunter. So they fall in love and get married and they're all ready to start a family, except that Ed is barren and can’t have children. Meanwhile, local unpainted wooden furniture magnate Nathan Arizona has quintuplets. H.I. and Ed decide the Arizona's aren't going to miss one kid when they have four more to take care of, so they break into the house and steal Nathan Jr. to raise as their own. Nathan Arizona Sr. puts out a bounty for whoever rescues his child and he hires this crusty-ass bounty hunter named Leonard Smalls aka The Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. Things get even more hectic when H.I.'s buddies break out of jail and decide they want to take the Arizona boy to return him to Nathan for the reward too. Everybody is trying to get their hands on this kid. Shenanigans ensue. 

Whew! The plot sounds more convoluted than it is when typing it out like this. Here’s some music as a palate cleanser:

So like I said, I’ve seen this movie about a dozen times before, but this time, something felt different. Perhaps it’s because I just got out of a very long relationship, perhaps it’s my age, perhaps it’s because I need a gimmick to write the blog post about, but I began to wonder for the first time ever – what would it be like if I had a kid of my own? And since this is a ridiculous comedy blog in which I’m going to run away from expressing any true or genuine emotion (such as how I really feel about getting older and having kids) I’m going to wonder what would happen if Nicolas Cage and I had a kid together. For starters, it might look a little like this:

 

Hmmmm....I wonder what would happen if Nicolas Cage and I and Harry Potter all had a kid together...

Hahaha. That was fun. Can we get a normal baby up in here, please?

That’s better.

Okay, so here I am, raising this baby. Let’s call the baby Nicky Cage. And let’s make my wife not actually Nicolas Cage (because it’d be swordfight city in the bedroom ('cause we're both dudes (the swords are our dicks))) so we’ll call her Nicole Cage. Are we clear?

So, I wonder...what would it be like? To be married? To have a child? To be a real "adult?"

To be perfectly honest, I've never given it much thought in the past. I really feel like I just graduated into adulthood. I'm seriously having a difficult time learning how to clean a bathroom proper or what that crazy packet of full healthcare and retirement plans they hand you when you start a new job means. Shit - I barely even have a "job" to begin with. HOW THE HELL ARE NICOLE CAGE AND I SUPPOSED TO RAISE THIS BABY TOGETHER?

My point is – I guess I'm just a selfish sonofabitch. I feel like it’s A LOT of work just to function as a semi-normal adult. Compound a kid on top of that and now I’m responsible for all of my own adultness plus making sure I don’t fuck up this little person...man...I’m getting anxiety just thinking about it.

Now, I know you're all gonna say “that’ll change with age.” Well, I’m 30 years old. I don’t feel much like a teenager anymore, even though the amount of time I spend laughing at farts and masturbating has in no way diminished over the years. And the waves, up and down, between one day and the next, are feeling less choppy. I'm leveling out. So when exactly is it all supposed to change? When I’m 35? 40? 55? 80?

So now you all say “that’ll change when you meet the right person.” Here's the thing: Nicole Cage is the right person. She's the right person because she's my fictional wife. My paradigm wife. The unobtainable perfect yin to my crooked yang. I created her for this blog post. In essence, she's an extension of me. I am my own right person, and I've know my self my entire life. Am I supposed to meet some girl and be browbeaten into a different way of thinking? Is that how "love" works? I refuse to believe that.

So when am I going to be ready to have kids? Probably never.

But I’m sure there’s a busted condom with my name on it somewhere. And when that day comes, I guess I’ll have no choice. It is what it is. I'll be raising my own Arizona. And there's really nothing wrong with that, right? Maybe that's what transitioning into adulthood and parenthood is all about. Maybe, for some of us, it isn't about taking the bull by the horns, but rather running screaming through the streets of Pamplona. I suppose there's no wrong way to grow-up. As long as we breathe, we're all somewhere along the line in that process. And there's got to be some solace in that. Isn’t that right, Lady MacCage?

How funny are all these Nic Cage pics, huh?

5 Cageheads out of 5.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

So this week we watched Peggy Sue Got Married. And when I say ‘we’ I really mean me. I watched this movie all by myself. Like a big boy. Are you proud of me?

So this is one of those clichéd Kathleen-Turner-is-at-her-25^th-high-school-reunion-and-her-estranged-appliance-selling-husband-played-by-Nicolas-Cage-shows-up-and-she’s-all-like-“Oh-my”-in-her-deep-sultry-Kathleen-Turner-voice-right-before-she-faints-in-front-of-everyone-and-then-wakes-up-transported-back-in-time-to-1960-allowing-her-the-opportunity-to-rediscover-all-the-things-she-originally-loved-about-her-husband-plus-she-gets-to-smoke-reffer-with-the-mysterious-artsy-guy-but-it-turns-out-he-wants-to-move-her-to-a-farm-in-the-midwest-where-he-can-practice-polygamy-because-hey-it’s-the-60’s-free-love-and-all-that-kind-of-stuff tales. You know, that old story.

Peggy Sue Got Locked In a Room Made of Clouds?

Before we move on to whatever asinine tangent I end up going off on, I need to first address Nic Cage’s performance. IT WAS THE BALLS! He plays a juvenile delinquent named Charlie, and although we’ve seen Nicolas Cage play a juvenile delinquent here and here and here and here before, we’ve NEVER seen him play one while putting on a voice like this:

Um...WHAT? THAT’S AWESOME! It’s, like, the perfect nerdy 50’s high school voice. I’m wondering why all the high school kids in this movie don’t have the same voice. They should’ve just overdubbed Nic Cage’s voice over everyone else. Even the music. Just have him hum the score. And he can do all the sound effects too. Like someone turns on a car and he can be “ch-ch-ch-ch-vrrrrooommmomomom” as if the car were a nerdy 50’s high school boy.

 "Ch-ch-ch....do you want to go to prom with me?"

So this movie is all about second chances and if we were given the opportunity, would we make the same choices? Would we make the same mistakes? And it got me thinking, what sort of regrets do I have from my past? If I could go back in time to when I was 18, what would I have done differently? I think if I went back, I'd probably do more drugs and have more unprotected sex. I barely did any drugs in high school and I still turned out a loser. What a waste, right?

 

Really though, let’s indulge this thought. I wonder what it would be like if I fainted while typing this blog post and were magically transported back to my senior year in high school...

[cue dreamy harp music as we fade to hypothetical flashback]

It is April 2001. The World Trade Center still stands. Only 1 person I know has a cell phone. I’ve finally managed to control my boners in class. And in three months, I’m finally going to graduate and marry my high school sweetheart, Nicolas Cage.

Nic Cage: Hey Danger Sue! It’s me your high school sweetheart Nic Cage – er...I mean, Charlie or whatever my character name is.

Me: Hey, Nic Cage.

Nic Cage: Danger Sue, as you know my Backstreet Boys cover band is really taking off. Some record guy is coming to check out our show or something like that. We’re destined for greatness. Here, check it out. Jim Carrey even has a bit part as one of the dudes in my band:

Me: Nah, dawg. I’ve been to the future. Actually, it’s not even the future. It’s the present. This is the past. Anyway, I’ve seen how your “band” turns out and you’re no A.J. McLean. You’re an actor – er...I mean, you’re an appliance salesman. And we’re estranged. I’m a huge fan of your movies, Nicolas Cage, and you don’t even know I exist. You end up fooling around with some chick in your appliance store and it hurts my feelings. I’m gonna go hang out with the artsy kids and we can talk about American Beauty and Magnolia and other artsy film that just got released that are much more thought provoking than this dumb Peggy Sue Got Married nightmare I’m stuck in. The artsy kids smoke cigarettes and are waaaaaaaay coooooler than you.

Nic Cage: Dang!

CUT TO: Later that night. Or maybe, like, a month later or something. I don’t know. Who cares?

Nic Cage: Hey Danger Sue. So my Backstreet Boys cover band didn’t work out.

Me: That’s okay. I love you anyway because I think the movie we’re in needs to end soon.

Nic Cage: Cool. I’m gonna go star in The Family Man now. I think that came out in 2001. I don’t remember exactly.

[cue dreamy harpy music again as we fade into me typing this blog again]

Wha – what happened? I swear I was a senior in high school again. I remember it so vividly! Like I was just typing it now! Whew. I’m so glad I’m back to being 30-years-old again. Life is so much better when you’re older and more mature. You can buy beer and you grow out of laughing at well-timed fart jokes.

 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!

Well I guess some things never change.

3 Cageheads out of 5.

The Boy in Blue (1986)

This week on Nicolas Uncaged we watched The Boy in Blue, a movie that finally answers the age-old question, "What the fuck is sculling and why in the hell would anyone want to make a movie about it?"

Well, the latter part of that question I'm afraid I don't have an answer to. As for the former, apparently sculling is just rowboating. I think they just call it sculling because it sounds way more bad-ass than rowing. Like, "Yo! I'm fuckin' sculling over here, you wimpy sonuvabitch! Now get outta my way before I crack your cracker ass with a goddamn oar!" as opposed to some nerdy white guy being all like, "Honey, have you seen my Ralph Lauren loafers? Hunter and I wanted to have a few highballs out on the Schuylkill this afternoon."

What rowboating has to do with that Rambo-looking Nicolas Cage in the movie poster above is beyond me. They were probably just trying to lure some ladies into the theater by teasing some male nipple action. Ladies love male nipple action.

So The Boy in Blue is a pretty straightforward biopic about real life sculler Ned Hanlan, who, in the mid 1870s, was the bad boy of Canada's professional rowing circuit. Yeah, there's a bad boy of professional rowing. There's a boy boy of everything, apparently:

See?

This was Nicolas Cage's first legitimate starring role where he didn't have to share all of his screen time with that dweeby Matthew Modine motherfucker. As far as his performance goes, there has definitely been an evolution in Cage's acting style between Valley Girl a few years back and this. He seems more comfortable on the screen. He seems to command the role, if that makes any sense. He has a way of making the characters he plays become him, as opposed to him melding into the character and The Boy in Blue is really the first glimpse we get at Mr. Cage finally spreading his acting wings.

In the film, he plays the titular 'boy in blue' Ned Hanlan and he was in every single scene of the movie. That is, except for this one:

Oh, sorry. That was something else. Here's an actual clip from the movie:

Oh! Faked you out again! Psych!

So listen, Dear Readers, I'm not going to mince words here. I found this The Boy in Blue movie to be boring as shit. Not actual shit, mind you, which can be somewhat interesting depending on its size and where its located. This movie was as boring as conceptual shit. In fact, the most exciting part of the whole movie was the trailer I just posted above with the raspy narrator and Flash Gordon-style music. I imagine if the real Ned Hanlan were as bad-ass as they say he was, I bet he'd watch this movie and be all like, "What the hell, man? This movie is as boring as conceptual shit." In fact, if he were to walk into the room while I was in the middle of watching the film, I suspect the conversation would've gone a little something like this:

NED

Um, hey, what's going on?

ME

Aaagggh! Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my apartment?!?

NED

Relax, dude. It's me. Ned Hanlan.

ME

Ned Hanlan? Like the guy in the movie I'm watching?

NED

Um...what the hell is a movie?

ME

You don't know what a movie is?

NED

Bitch, I was born in 1855. How about you stop being such a dick about it and enlighten me.

ME

[pointing to the TV]

Okay, well, there it is...

NED

What the - what kind of witchcraft are you practicing in here, boy?

ME

They don't have TVs where you're from?

NED

Dude, do you think I'd be wasting my goddamn days rowboating around Canada if I had literally anything else to do?

ME

That's a good point. According to the movie, though, you're one of the best scullers to ever live. That's gotta feel pretty good.

NED

[sarcastic]

Yeah. Yippee! I'm the best out of like...9 people. And what is this you're saying? They made a movie about my life?

ME

Hey, I'm just as surprised as you are.

NED

Do you have a problem with my chosen profession? Huh?

ME

No. Of course not. I do have a problem when my journey through the filmography of Nicolas Cage takes a left turn into the steaming pile of horsepoop that is this film.

NED
Who is this Nicolas Cage character you speak of?

ME
Oh man. Ned, he's this totally awesome actor. He's all crazy and animated and shit. He brings a certain...color to the characters he plays. Makes 'em seem both real and hyper-real at the same time, ya know? But then, just when you think you got this guy's style down - he does the old switcheroo on you and he plays a subtle and nuanced character, really digging into what makes a character human. And then - switcharoo again! He's the motherfuckin' GHOST RIDER!

NED
Ghost Rider?

ME
Yeah, fool. Nic Cage is pretty much the shit. I even run a blog on the internet called Nicolas Uncaged where I write these silly, nonsensical, pseudophilosphical posts about his movies.

NED
I don't know what a blog is, nor do I know what the internet is.

ME
The internet is a network of computers that share common information across the entire world and a blog is a page on the internet where a person, such as myself, can post articles about whatever subject they choose. Mine is about Nicolas Cage. And, here's the ironic part, I'm actually writing the blog RIGHT NOW!

NED
How are you writing on it right now? You're sitting in a room talking to me.

ME
No we're not. We're only talking in my imagination. What's actually happening is I'm sitting on my couch on a Friday at 11:08pm and I'm just sorta pulling this entire article out of my ass. I decided to do this meta-reality thing where I reference both you, myself and the blog as if we are all just characters in a blog about a blog...or something like that. It's all very confusing. I just thought it would be funny if I had a conversation with the "real" Ned Hanlan - you - who is actually not the real Ned Hanlan, but rather just my own imagination.

NED
Wow, dude. You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you?

ME
Nice try, man, but you can't rip on me because I'm the one who decides what you say and if I make fun of myself it's self-deprecating and clever and down-to-Earth and shit.

NED
This has all been fun, buddy, but you're wrong about me. I am real. I'm standing right here in front of you.

ME
How can you be real? Huh? The real Ned Hanlan died over 100 years ago. He's dead and buried.

NED
Not quite. I'm undead. And...unburied, I suppose. I'm what you would call a zombie. A flesh-eater. An unholy cannibal brought back to life with Santeria and black magic and stuff like that. I was a sculler back when I was alive and now I'm a monster come here to pop your skull open and scoop out those delicious brains.

ME
Nah. That's stupid.

NED
Excuse me? What's stupid?

ME
The whole zombie-angle-Shyamalan-twist-at-the-end here. It's a stupid way to end this bit.

NED
Huh. Well how do you think it should end? This whole conversation is running a little long. I'm going to assume most people stopped reading waaaaaaaay before they got here. And now you've kinda written yourself into a corner.

ME
I really did, didn't I?

NED
Yeah. So what then? How do we close out the article?

ME
I don't know. You wanna get a bite to eat or something? There's a great 24-hour diner just down the street.

NED
Nice! Do you think they have disco fries there?

ME
Duh.

NED
Sweet, dude. I love me some disco fries.

1 Cagehead out of 5.