The mere existence of Nicolas Cage is confounding and something weโre better off not delving too deeply into. Is he the greatest kind of bad? The worst kind of good? Who knows. But the most head-scratching detail about our favourite shamanistic thespian was revealed during a recent interview with Collider, wherein Nicolas Cage stated the belief his best movies were made in the past decade.
โI think Iโve done some of the best work in the last 10 years of my entire life and I put The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in that period, which has been, in some ways, marginalised by certain folks in the media,โ said Nicolas Cage.
โBut I think Iโll put Pig and Massive Talent and Mandy and Colour Out Of Space and Bad Lieutenant and Joe and The Trust and The Runner up against anything I did in the first 30 years.โ
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As subjective as it may be, keep in mind โ this sentiment was expressed with full sincerity despite the fact The Rock, Con Air, as well his Academy Award-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas all occurred in the 90s; while Adaptation, Matchstick Men, and the National Treasure series occurred a little later in the early 2000s.
Regardless of whether the masses can agree on what are the best Nicolas Cage movies to date, one thing remains certain: he stands by every single entrant of his filmography to this day โ direct-to-video or otherwise.
Speaking with GQ, Cage outlined two things he refused to do when it was time to pay the IRS $6.3 million worth of unpaid property taxes (after blowing his entire $150 million fortune): 1. file for bankruptcy (which was against just about everyoneโs advice), and 2. phone it in for the paycheque.
โIโve got all these creditors and the IRS and Iโm spending $20,000 a month trying to keep my mother out of a mental institution, and I canโt โ it was just all happening at once,โ Nicolas Cage explained of his debt.
โWhen I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all. They didnโt work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didnโt work.โ
โBut I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring.โ
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Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. As of a little over two years ago, Nicolas Cage officially paid off all of said debt shortly after signing on for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Quite fitting, considering he portrays a fictional version of himself who accepts a less-than-conventional gig for a quick buck.
โI enjoy making movies like Pig and Leaving Las Vegas more than I enjoy making movies like National Treasure,โ added Nicolas Cage.
โIโm just going to focus on being extremely selective, as selective as I can be. I would like to make every movie as if it were my last.โ
