Nicolas Cage got candid with a crowd at the Red Sea Film Festival on December 7. While discussing his successful, decades-long movie career, the National Treasure actor, 59, teased the crowd that his new project includes an embarrassing scene, per Variety.
According to Nicolas, Dream Scenario features “the most humiliating love scene in the history of cinema,” and he noted that his relationship to stardom changed as he worked on the production. “I suffered from the meme-ification and my character suffers from the dream-ification.”
The Leaving Las Vegas actor was referring to the memes he stumbled upon about himself on the Internet. After Googling his name recently, he found several videos titled, “Nicolas Cage loses his s**t.”
Dream Scenario focuses on college professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas), who discovers that he appears in millions of other people’s dreams. Although their dreams about him are initially harmless, his appearances turn into nightmares. After people recognize him in public, drama ensues, and Paul must figure out how to resolve his nightmarish issue.
Elsewhere in his discussion, Nicolas reflected on his relationship with his uncle, world-renowned director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. The Renfield star noted that the Godfather writer and director was “like a dad to [him].”
“He wanted to play golf, and I wanted to go fishing, and so we ended up talking about movies,” Nicolas explained. “Independent dramatic cinema is my well.”
Although many fans believe this is the Cage renaissance, Nicolas has starred in over 100 films. Now, he’s interested in performing on stage rather than make another movie. “I want to do television; maybe Broadway,” he added.
Nicolas’ comments come four days after he dropped a major bombshell during an interview with The Uproxx: he wants to step away from filmmaking.
“I feel that I’ve, at this point — after 45 years of doing this, that in over 100 movies — I feel I’ve pretty much said what I’ve had to say with cinema,” the City of Angels actor pointed out. “And I’d like to leave on a high note and say, ‘Adios.’ … I think I have to do maybe three or four more movies before I can get there, and then, hopefully, switch formats and go into some other way of expressing my acting.”
Nicolas then pointed out that the “high note” would have been Dream Scenario, but he has “other contracts” to “fulfill.” Therefore, the producer intends to be pickier when it comes to film roles in the future.
“I mean, I am going to be very severe and very astringent on the selection process moving forward,” he added. “But for me to do another movie, I do want to explore other formats. I am very interested in immersion streaming with episodic television. I have seen things that can be done now with characters and the time they’re given to express themselves. I saw Bryan Cranston stare at a suitcase for an hour on one episode of Breaking Bad. We don’t have time to do that in a feature film, so maybe television is the next best step for me.”