Directing Nic Cage At His Most Chaotic? Harder than You’d Think

Nicolas Cage has a way about him that you just instantly recognize. Famously, his filmography broke Abed Nadir in Community when he was trying to figure out his acting styles. As someone who loves Cage’s work, it is a ride that keeps you on the edge of your seat and Sympathy for the Devil just so happens to be a great example of that.

In preparation for the film’s release, I spoke with director Yuval Adler about working with Cage to create the Passenger and channeling those Cage-isms to work best for the film. “I never worked with somebody who’s so fanatic in the best places,” Adler said. “Like five, six weeks before the shoot, he’s a hundred percent on the film. You feel like all he does at home in the late hours is sit on the script. I am doing prep and I get 10,000 texts. What about this line? Can I say this? What about this? Why? Can we change it? Look at this video of Truman Capote interviews with Tennessee Williams. What do you think about their accent? Look at his jacket. That, all the time. And brilliant. Right? He comes up with a lot of ideas.”

Adler went on to talk about how Cage would bring all that prep work to set prior to even starting to film. “His thing is he comes up with so much stuff and then that’s your job to be. And then he told me that, on the set, he would be like, ‘look, I have to trust you to protect me. That’s how I can go wild. So in the editing, you can protect me. If not everything I do, it’s gonna be there.’ So we got into this groove.”

Being in charge of making sure that Cage going wild works for the movie is a lot to take on. It is, as we’ve seen with his work, not the easiest task but when Cage is good, he’s so good and even when he goes wild, we still are fascinated by all his work as an actor. Sympathy for the Devil is a great example of what happens when Cage is left to shine.

You can see our full interview here:

Sympathy For the Devil is now available on VOD and if you’re a fan of Cage’s work, this is definitely one to watch!

(featured image: RLJE films)