Apparently, having Nic Cage pitch to you is as intense an experience as you’d expect – at least according to Seth Rogen.
Seth Rogen was recently on the Howard Stern show in the US (via The Hollywood Reporter), and whilst there he recounted a meeting he had with the force of nature that is Nicolas Cage. Cage at the time was being considered for a small part in 2011’s The Green Hornet.
Negotiations began in a characteristically Cage-y fashion, with Cage stating he wanted the character to have ‘tattooed hair.’ Recalls Rogen: “and we were like, ‘okay…’ We were kind of wrapping our heads around it. And I remember laughing hysterically when he said it on the phone — and then stopped, realising it wasn’t a joke”.
When it came time to meet Cage to discuss the part, Rogen became more than a little mystified when the actor demanded to play the role as a ‘white Bahamian man’. Nonetheless, he agreed to meet Cage for dinner at Sony chief Amy Pascal’s house.
“I remember going there with Evan Goldberg, my partner and just being like, ‘I just don’t want him to do it in front of us. I’ll just be so uncomfortable.’ And I remember Evan being like, ‘He’s not going to do it. He’ll talk about it. He won’t launch into it. That would be too much. And literally within 60 seconds, we were all seated at the house as he stands in front of us reciting a monologue, talking in a Jamaican accent. And we were just like, ‘it’s happening’.
“[His] monologue was not in the script. Nor did it have anything to do with the script. At which point I was like, ‘I don’t think he’s even read the script.”
When Rogen’s praise was not immediately forthcoming, Cage was quick to exit. “We all sit down for dinner and almost right away he just gets up and leaves,” remembers Rogen.
It’s a typically intense story, focused on one of the most intense actors working in Hollywood today, although we’re not sure it beats him somersaulting onto Terry Wogan’s chat show in 1992 before stripping and throwing money at the audience.
Any more great Nic Cage stories? Let’s hear them in the comments below.
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