"I wanted no part of it," the actor continued. "But when I got Tom's letter, then I thought, 'OK, he's not just trying to mock so-called Nick Cage; there is a real interest in some of the earlier work.' His tone was more of a celebration of some of [the actor's iconic onscreen] moments — like being at the bottom of the pool in Leaving Las Vegas or [using] the gold guns in Face/Off."
Ironically, what really hooked Cage was a part that is no longer in the movie. "It was a sequence where the Nick Cage character goes into a series of vignettes that are all stylized in the German expressionism of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. So there was a sequence in black and white that was a Gone in 60 Seconds race in a Mustang, there was the Leaving Las Vegas character in a hotel room. It was fun to make and cool to look at," the actor said.
"Ultimately, the studio decided it was too far out for audiences."
So far, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is getting good press. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 28 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. Rafael Motamayor, for example, wrote in Polygon, "The Nick Cage meta-movie hits all the right buttons, in ways no one would suspect going in."
"I think I can speak for all of the moderators here, and community members in showing my appreciation to Nick Cage for doing this AMA. If ever there was a 'Cage' movie to come out and see, it would be Nicolas Cage playing 'Nick Cage' ... I'm definitely going to check out The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, hope y'all check it out as well," u/enfrozt concluded.
Let's hope this AMA will help it sell as many tickets as it can. Sounds like both the movie and Nick deserve it.
