Pedro Pascal Reveals His Mount Rushmore Of Nicolas Cage Movies
In Tom Gormican's 2022 film "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," Pedro Pascal plays Javi Gutierrez, a fun-loving playboy billionaire living in Majorca, Spain. Javi is a huge fan of actor Nicolas Cage and hires him to hang out for a weekend. Cage, playing himself, cautiously accepts the offer, having found himself in a bit of a creative rut; a younger version of Cage appears in visions to lambaste his older self that he is no longer the massive movie star he once was. Javi will spend a great deal of time heaping praise on Cage and eventually reveals that he has a secret collectibles vault full of Cage-related memorabilia. Cage, meanwhile, will be secretly approached by the CIA, and told that Javi is actually a dangerous arms dealer that might be involved in an ongoing kidnapping plot. The film is bright, whimsical, and enjoyable. Cage, as he always does, brings his A-game, and Pascal has never been funnier.
In real life, Pascal is also a Cage fan. Like many of us, Pascal has seen many of Cage's movies and certainly has his favorites. On the most recent episode of "Hot Ones," Pascal revealed to the show's host, Sean Evans, that he considered Cage's earlier works — the films he made in the 1980s — to be the most impressive and significant of his career. He also threw in a 1990s action classic for good measure, and one might have already predicted what it was.
While his face was burning from the Angry Goat Co.'s Dreams of Calypso hot sauce (rated at 101,000 Scoville units, about as hot as a raw habanero chili pepper), Pascal revealed his four favorites
The four movies
Pascal immediately listed his four:
"The earlier ones for me because of how impressionable they are, but: 'Raising Arizona,' 'Peggy Sue Got Married,' 'Face/Off.' I've got a soft spot for 'Moonstruck,' man. And it isn't even about having a big swing in terms of performance. It is actually highly, highly intelligent choice-making in his acting. Where I'm gonna do, like, a Fritz Lang hand thing in the moment where I scream about my brother Danny Aiello accidentally chopping his hand off, he looked away and chopped his hand off he's like, 'I lost my hand!'"
Fritz Lang was, of course, the celebrated German filmmaker behind classics like "Metropolis," "M," and "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse." Essays have been written about the way the filmmaker uses hands and hand-related imagery in his work. In "Metropolis" in particular, the robot-creating mad scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) famously raised his hands in two maniacal claws, one of them in a dark glove, as he announced his evil plans for a robot-motivated class uprising. In "Moonstruck," Cage's character Ronny — the brother of Danny Aiello's Johnny — has a wooden hand that he similarly hoists, evoking Rotwang. Pascal continued to describe the scene, saying:
"[I]t is just to this perfect effect where it's grounded in the scene, it has all of this theatrical context to it and concept, he's still believable. It was really amazing to do homework for ['The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent'] and re-watch all these movies that I'd already seen so many times."
Pascal, however, feels that Cage's best performance came later than his '80s run.
Adaptation.
Pascal adds that, while he still leans into his our core favorites, he also feels that Cage's dual performance in Spike Jonez's 2002 film "Adaptation." was worth a mention. In "Adaptation.," Cage plays a fictionalized version of the film's actual screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, as well as Charlie's 100 percent fictional twin brother, Donald. The film is about the struggles Kaufman was having adapting the novel "The Orchid Thief" to the page, and his wrestling with the fineries of screenwriting. "Adaptation." is a cry of creative frustration from within the film we're watching. As a counterpoint, Donald was achieving great success writing shallow thrillers without a lot of thought into them. Pascal said:
"'Adaptation.' is maybe one of the best screen performances in the history of American cinema. But the four that I mentioned have, you know, a personal place in my development as an aspiring actor, and to this day in my DNA a little bit where I realize that I'm doing something and I'm saying something in a way that I have to stop and take a second and realize, 'Oh, I got that from 'Vampire's Kiss' or something,' you know?"
It seems Pascal, and probably many other actors, have taken line readings and miniature mannerisms from Cage without even really realizing it. That Pascal was permitted to star opposite Cage in a movie was a dream only few could realize.
He then ate a hot wing laced with Da' Bomb Beyond Insanity hot sauce, which measures 135,600 Scoville units. It was then that Pascal's eyeballs began to melt.