Oh, God. Oh, my God.
Are we on hot mics at the moment?
Yeah. Say something real egregious.
I don't know what egregious means, so I assume it's racist. Sure.
Boy, those egregions.
Let me tell you about that.
You know what they're like?
Ancient egregions.
Let's talk about the modern egregions.
Yeah.
This shouldn't be that puzzling.
We should from the top.
At this point, it's clear what this is.
Yeah, I mean, I think we are doing it now.
The Nicolas Cage buying, selling, wrecking podcast.
Yeah.
The all seeing, all dancing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nicolas Cage review.
That's it.
Jazz hands. All male, all nude.
Yeah, definitely.
Cage review. Yes.
Speaking of the day, welcome back to Cage match colon
a roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage, a podcast where we discuss
the films and only the films of one Nicolas Cage.
This week we have I'm Nick.
Oh, yes. Names.
Hi, Nick. How are you doing?
This is your friend, Sean, and co-host of Cage.
Oh, it's a pleasure to meet you.
Also, Peter, how are you today? I'm here, too.
You know, the more comfortable I get at doing this, the worse I get at it.
Yeah. OK, so to quickly recap, this is 64 Nicolas Cage movies.
Only Nicolas Cage going head to head, week to week. Got
bracket style.
And at the end, there will be one ultimate Victor Nicolas Cage movie
as chosen by three idiots in the Pacific Northwest, which is definitive.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's how most things are decided.
This week, we have It Could Happen to You versus Racing with the Moon.
And maybe for the first time in the history of this entire podcast,
we get to talk about two good movies.
Yeah, we'll see about that.
Oh, nice. Yeah, I like it.
Oh, but I didn't give up the goat this time.
It's not my turn to fuck it up.
It's usually my job.
I'm trying so hard not to.
And I did when I started starting this thing.
So this is an eight and a nine going up against each other.
So they're they're kind of middling movies,
which maybe that's how you felt about them.
I don't know. I mean, up until this point, we've usually had
last week, not withstanding, we've usually had a banger to a dud,
a banger to a dud.
So, yeah, we're talking about
Racing with the Moon 1984 Nicolas Cage movie.
So young cage and 1994s.
It Could Happen to You still youngish, still looking good.
Which one do we want to jump into first?
Oh, let's just do Racing with the Moon.
All right. Pre synopsis.
Two best buddies, lifelong chums, Henry Hopper Nash, played by Sean Penn
and Nicky played by Nick Cage are two childhood friends
who are getting ready to ship off to World War Two.
And they have three weeks to live their lives as best as possible.
Hilarity ensues.
Yeah, they're, you know, high schoolers.
They're like 17 years old.
They're going to get into some hijinks in their last six weeks.
I mean, Nick Cage is definitely the comic relief of this piece.
Certainly. He plays a second man.
Yeah, this is a supporting role in this one.
Definitely more of a Sean Penn picture.
But could be why it's so good.
I'm not taking a dig at Nick Cage.
Don't worry, people. I still love him.
We do love Nick Cage, but I do have to say, because this is
just before Birdie, so he has all his teeth.
Yeah, I checked. I looked.
We counted. But this is definitely not his best work as an actor.
Oh, yeah. He gives kind of a tough performance.
It's I mean, it's not bad. It's not good.
No, it's very just there.
I don't know. I think he I still think he did a good job with what it is.
I agree. He plays kind of just a boozing bowling pin setting.
He works at a bowling alley.
Also, the first time I've ever seen that machine
that they used the pin setter in the 40s.
So wacky. It's a wild little contraption.
So Nicky and Henry, their day jobs are they work at a bowling alley
and they are pin setters.
Yeah, they have to like go at the back of the alley, grab pins,
throw them this device and like push it down and weigh it down
and then even like adjust the pins.
Right. While dodging bowling balls.
From Crispin Glover. From Crispin Glover.
I was just I want to say right now this week I was amazed
that all of the supporting cast, there was some really good people.
With this movie, we had Crispin Glover and Carole Kane's in it.
Michael Madsen is in there as the the GI with his leg blown off.
Oh, I didn't even notice that. Yeah.
So and just like in real life, the time I met Crispin Glover,
I didn't realize it was Crispin Glover till later.
Yeah, it was during the credits when I noticed. Yeah, same.
I love Crispin Glover. For me, that face is the kid from Stranger Things.
Finn Wolfhardt. Oh.
I don't say this lightly. That kid should be bullied more.
I'm going to have to cut that out.
OK, just cut out the name. Just bleep up. Just quack out the name.
We're not going to be the podcast of child bullying.
Yeah, we're already the podcast of woman punching.
Get it together, man.
Fair. I mean, if he bleeps out the name, we still could be.
We're not ready to diversify yet, though.
We got to we got to get a handle on one thing that we punch.
Yeah. Only if they set you on fire.
Yeah, but Crispin Glover is just
launching bowling balls at him in this scene at Sean Penn.
Yeah, I mean, it was one of my more enjoyed scenes.
I mean, straight out of the beginning of this movie, the most comedic aspect
of the film. Sure.
They're doing that work. They're busy.
It's like fast paced.
And they're just trying to catch up because Henry's just getting on work.
And Nikki.
So this is our connection to Bertie is all about boobs.
Oh, yeah. He loves a good boob. Loves a good boob.
In fact, is trying to get Henry to go on a double date with him
because Nikki's girlfriend's parents don't like him.
I wonder why.
Hmm. Henry's not really dating.
So they hire local sex worker played by Carol Kane.
Yeah. Yep. To Annie, the prostitute.
Annie, the prostitute sex worker.
We've established that we only use that.
Thank you. I think she was credited as Annie, the prostitute.
Well, Annie, the sex worker 1984 has a lot to learn.
Get woke 1984. Yeah, come on.
Yeah. So he hires.
So, I mean, I don't think money was exchanged.
They seem to be on pretty good terms.
Yeah. She she offers.
She offers them, you know, freebie offers Sean Penn a freebie.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that was a scene.
Yeah. What else we got?
So the whole so the whole larger premise of the film is Sean Penn
meets a woman who works at the movie theater and the library
played by Elizabeth McCover.
Caddy Wenger and decides to woo them in the age old tradition of stocking.
Remember when stocking was considered romantic?
Well, he she gets on a bus.
Yeah. OK. And he jumps on the back of the bus and then jumps off
and like sneaks around in the bushes to see her go into the big rich people house.
Yeah. OK, that's fair.
I don't think he like was trying to woo her by stalking her.
But I'm just saying it was a trait in movies of this era.
Yeah. But wrongfully assumes that she comes from money, that she is rich
when, in fact, her mother is the maid of this house and she just lives in it
and is friends with the rich girl who does live there.
Main crux of the film is Henry and Katie trying to figure this whole thing out
before he goes to war. Right.
So they have a few weeks to form a relationship.
All the while, Nicky's in the background.
No consequences. I'm going to war enough.
You know, fuck who I want.
I'm going to kill a bunch of expletives for the Japanese.
And everything's going to be great.
And of course, he winds up knocking up his girlfriend and suddenly
they need an abortion before he leaves town to die.
A clean abortion. Clean abortions.
I don't know. The trailer she walks into didn't look that clean.
I talked about this, but then I was reminded that abortions
in the 40s were probably not pretty off the books anyways.
So and it, of course, comes down to that's an expensive procedure.
They try and raise the money by.
Well, they try to shark some people at pool because some Navy Navy men.
Yeah. Sean Penn's character, Henry,
apparently a really good pool player.
They take it out to this pool hall and after some convincing by Nicky.
Yeah. Henry agrees to do this.
They get out there, go to shark some dudes and end up finding out
that they were getting played from the beginning. Yeah.
I thought that was a really good scene. I enjoyed it too.
I really loved that kind of jazz track that was playing
while they went through the actual game, once it was like officially on.
Yeah. They don't have enough money to put 150 down on the game.
So they get a couple of other Navy men to see.
And I can't believe I missed that joke.
A couple of other seamen do it bet on their buddies and they do.
So suddenly the money's on the table and the guy starts playing a lot better.
What were they playing? They referred to it as straight pool.
So it's sort of like an end score.
And it was just in this case, it was one ball, one point.
There wasn't they weren't calling out balls in sequential order.
It was you put a ball in a pocket, you get a point.
You got to get 100 points to win the game.
That would go forever.
There's lots of games that take a long time.
I guess you're supposed to be drinking while you do these things.
Yeah, generally.
You don't want a five minute game. That's boring.
It was the 40s. You didn't have cell phones.
You didn't have any other distractions.
What do people do?
Well, they knocked people up and got clean abortions.
I played Pugl with semen.
Scenes like that wouldn't exist in movies nowadays.
Like they wouldn't have spent that much time on that setup.
And I agree with you, Nick, where it's like the music
and everything about the way it was cut, the tension that came from it,
even though it still felt kind of like a romp.
It was really interesting.
I mean, you just wouldn't see something that takes eight minutes.
You know, kind of a throwaway scene.
Like it really doesn't have any effect on the movie, but it's a good one.
By the time it gets to
Nikki needs the money to pay for the abortion.
He's the one who brings up in front of Katie that she's rich.
She could help.
And then he's, you know, like, fuck off.
Don't you always fuck up everything?
You fuck up my life.
You know, you're the biggest fuck up.
And there's the movie doesn't spend that much time on Nick Cage
and Sean Penn's relationship.
But then thinking over it, writing up show notes, thinking about the pool scene,
the fact that they almost got, you know, their heads stomped in by semen.
I go, no, he does fuck up quite a bit.
Yeah, he doesn't seem to have like a successful outing on anything
except touching boobs.
Yeah, he's pretty good at that.
Yeah. Talk about the.
I didn't have a segue out of that one.
No, I mean, I kind of do because you're talking about some of these antics
that he gets into.
And I think one of the other like amusing scenes is the two of them drunk.
Oh, yes, the tattoo scene.
So like I said, Nikki is all gung ho America.
We're going to kill the expletives for Japanese people.
So they get drunk one night and Nikki wants to get a giant bald eagle
across his chest.
And the proprietor of the tattoo shop is like, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to do you a favor and not tattoo a giant eagle on her chest,
which I've worked in a tattoo shop.
It was a proper response to someone that drunk coming in and demanding a tattoo.
Well, Nikki doesn't take kindly to like, this is a freedom bird.
This is America.
The way the guy gets out of it is just like, how much you got?
They have what? 250 between them.
About 38. Yeah.
About 38. That'll get you a sparrow on the elbow.
You just sparrow on the elbow.
I will say, though, Elizabeth McGovern, Katie loved her character.
Super charming.
The way she goes about wooing Henry Sean Penn.
She tries to kind of initially blow him off by being.
She is set up by her with her friend's cousin,
but her friend doesn't have a date to the roller rink.
So Henry comes in.
She's like, Henry, what are you doing on Christmas Eve?
And tries to get him to commit to plans.
And she's like, great. You're going to go out with my friend here.
I loved Henry's little dumb way of getting into this.
She's like, Christmas Eve, you you've probably got plans with your family.
Right. He's like, oh, yeah.
Family. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I don't have plans.
No. Oh, what's going on?
Oh, my dad, he's and he looks over and just sees a fishing magazine.
And he's like, he's fishing. He Kaiser so say that. Yeah.
It was fun.
I mean, I'm going to do it poorly because I'm not Sean Penn.
But but who is Sean Penn?
My buddy Paul looks a lot like Sean Penn.
And so Paul's Sean Penn. Paul is Sean Penn.
It was good.
She just kind of brings him in with it.
And then, you know, it's a bait and switch.
I do also like how we see that Henry.
Henry's a bit of a rebel. Henry doesn't follow the rules
because he's getting piano lessons at the beginning of the movie.
And he plays pretty well on the piano.
He's like, no, play it like this. No, play it like this.
And he finally gets it.
And then he just does a little ragtime and the piano instructor just stands up,
grabs his coat, throws on his hat.
His mom comes in like, stop it, stop it.
And like, I'm so sorry.
And he just like storms out of the house.
He just can't stand that popular music.
Yeah. Well, he was a pastor.
Was he? Yeah.
It's like the pastor or whatever.
And so that damned rock and roll.
That damned fucking music.
Yeah. Sensibilities were different back then.
Yeah. You could touch a boob, but don't listen to rock and roll.
They had a hard job.
They were having bowling balls thrown at them by Crispin Glover.
Yeah. He had a good arm.
I'm just so intrigued by how bowling alleys used to work.
I know they had to pick up the ball and send it down a ramp.
Every time we go bowling, I keep telling you monkeys could do that job.
And I mean, if Nick Cage could do it, a monkey could do it.
Maybe, maybe.
I would like to see like baboons in the back.
Just big red butts and blue faces.
They could hang upside down while doing it.
It's true. They wouldn't have balls thrown at their legs that way.
I'm just saying like there's a money making scheme here to be made
where we sell a baboon instead of like these $50,000 machines.
I guarantee if we try to sell a baboon,
it will be problematic and not end well for either of us.
Because it will be killed by a baboon.
Yes.
Not even the moral implications of baboon sales.
Just the fact that if we had a baboon, it would kill us.
I'm not versed on monkey law, so I can't say.
But I've watched a few nature documentaries
and I think I would get bit a lot.
They go for the testicles.
They just rip those things right off.
Sons of bitches.
I like my testicles exactly where they are.
I hear the Germans have a thing that.
OK, let's let's get into favorite quotes.
We're getting into my favorite quotes.
OK, well, why don't you just give us your favorite quote?
All right. Yeah. Nick was about to go there.
It's Nick Cage.
Nick Cage talking about talking to Henry.
It's like, I hear the Nazis got this thing comes right at the ground,
goes right for it, blows the whole package right off.
One second, you're John Wayne.
The next your Minnie Mouse.
That was pretty good.
I enjoyed a few other lines than you.
This isn't my favorite.
I'm going to give you two because I like to do that.
When they're at the tattoo shop and the tattoo artist was just like
Bird of Freedom, don't come cheap.
And Nicky just kind of looks at him.
He's he's fucking hammered and he just goes, oh,
it was the only like full Nicholas Cage
experience that we got in this movie.
But it was a pretty good one. Just just looking at.
My actual favorite quote.
They were at their school and their school was doing like a wartime drills
like for training for the girls to go be nurses.
And so nurses girls were like coming around and all the boys had like fake
blood on them and little notes that said like shot multiple times or dead.
And the nurses would take care of them.
Well, this nurse comes up to Henry and Nicky and she's like trying to deal with them.
And Nicky's just like trying to get fresh with this chick.
And she's like, oh, I'll come back when you're more ready for this.
And Nick Cage just goes, no, wait, please, nurse.
I want to show you my wound.
And that really got me. My other one.
Do we want to do this to partner?
OK, you want to I'll be Sean Penn.
All right. Sean Penn does the whole thing about how it's like, you know,
I hate what you always drink.
I hate when you're drinking.
And Nick Cage does an awkward hip thrust dance before he started drinking.
I could not do that.
Why would you want to do that?
It gives me pleasure.
Yeah. So he's just air humping.
Yeah. But he does it wildly.
Actually, both times, Nick Cage does any kind of dancing.
And this is just terrific.
Later, when he's in the bowling alley and he's mopping,
just like singing a song and then he just busts out this just wild
gyration of like a full body seizure.
It's just so good.
And then the bowling alley owner yells at him.
It's like, yeah, it was like, what do I pay you for?
Nick Cage, like I'm your best employee in bowling alley owners.
Like, no, you're not.
His only response is then I don't fucking know.
No, it's good.
I really I like Nicolas Cage in this whole movie.
I do too. He's charming.
I don't think there's a single scene where he's not drinking.
No, he almost always has like a pint of whiskey on him.
Yep. He's a fuck up.
Like, yeah, he is. He's just drunk all the time.
And we know within the film because he has a shiner
when he's going to pick up his date early in the film.
And he just offhand mentions that, you know, it's his old man.
And his mom's out of the picture. She died.
Yeah. And that's the other thing is after they have their blow up
and Henry tells Nick Cage to fuck off, Henry's dad is a gravedigger,
groundskeeper at the cemetery.
And it turns out that after Nicky's mom died,
they kind of took him in like the dad was a fuck up and an asshole.
So they fed Nicky a lot in childhood.
You know that Nicky is at his heart a good kid.
And a lot of that has to do with his friendship with Henry
and their family's like influence on him,
which I thought was a nice little touch. Yeah.
I do care to us. Yeah, that's nice.
I do want to briefly touch on the end, which we do need to quickly discuss
when Nicky tells Henry about needing the abortion.
It's after they do a thing they used to do as kids, which is race a train
and then grab onto one of the box cars and ride it for a while,
then jump off on a hill.
Apparently, this is a very dangerous thing, especially when you're drunk.
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.
Yeah. I mean, trains are big, heavy things.
They flatten shit. Yeah.
So especially people. That's a thing that, you know, that's a thing,
you know, from their childhood that they remember fondly.
So caddy and Henry break up, they get together back at the end
right before he ships out.
He gives her the kiss.
He says bye to mom and dad
all while the train conductors like, you know, all aboard.
And the train starts leaving.
And we have this really nice heartfelt ending.
And his parents are just like, you're missing your train.
You're missing your train.
And they just look at each other and like, ready, go.
And they like have this fun little jaunt along the train.
And grab on at the end.
Yeah, that really undercut the heartfelt ending.
It showed reconciliation between the two of them after their fight.
I just thought it was a weird like add on.
Well, it felt actually a little bit similar to the ending of Birdie,
where it kind of ends on just a little bit of a bit on the joke.
Right. I forgot about that.
Yeah, a little bit.
Totally like that. What?
To me, it was like their characters, their stories had just come full circle
and they were back to it.
I just wanted to touch on Elizabeth McGovern's performance.
I thought that was really good.
She was great.
Great, really clean performance.
Yeah. And like I had an issue with that.
I loved her introduction.
She's just dancing in a field by herself.
And all I thought to myself was that girl dances to her own beat.
You can't hear it, but she does.
I mean, there were there were little things
she was doing with her face and her eyes that I thought were just like
really advanced acting.
Yeah, it was a really nuanced performance. Yeah.
And I mean, I don't really know a deep dive into the rest of her career.
I know she's big on.
Downton Abbey and like a few other things.
Not a whole lot that I've really seen.
Yeah, it's just interesting.
Some of these these sort of like young, ingenue actresses,
like what became of them, because obviously like Sean Penn, Nick Cage,
everybody else who's in this movie, like it's it's a surprising cast.
Yeah, I don't know.
I know this movie financially didn't do well.
It was maybe like a six and a half million budget with a six million bucks.
Well, five of that went to Nick Cage, of course.
Obviously, there's a few interesting just filmmaking things.
I found the shot with the train when they're on the tracks
and the trains coming at them.
That's a mirror and they're just reflecting a train on another set of tracks.
Oh, so that way, you know, their leads weren't in any actual mortal danger.
That's fair. That's good.
So that's pretty cool, like old style filmmaking.
What did you think overall of his performance, though?
I know, like a little overacty.
I wasn't blown away by it, but he said he's just such a supporting character, too.
It was hard to really get anything out of him.
He was there to just drive parts of the story.
And I mean, the scene where Sean Penn like pretty much tells him off, you know,
you could you can see the hurt in him.
Yeah, it's also hard to like really gauge it for me because he is just playing
me like half in the bag most of the time.
Yeah. So maybe good acting.
Maybe. I don't know if I really had a big strong opinion on that.
No, I didn't.
Like, it wasn't hasn't been his best performance that we've seen so far.
Probably not. Not his worst.
Yeah, I think what struck me is that while it was overacty,
there were those moments like the weird response to the tattoo
that just were like, oh, there he is.
Yeah, he pops out every once in a while.
It's not flat. It's not a flat performance.
It's not left behind.
I think he did fine.
I don't think it was a bad performance on his.
No, it was early in his career.
It's no worse than his performance in Birdie, which was also
fairly flat, just at different decibel levels.
True. And I really liked Birdie. Yeah.
OK. Well, how about a little bit of 1994?
Romantic comedy.
This is where I really shine, because these are these are the movies I love.
This is your bread and butter.
Yep. So this movie is a true story or based on a true story.
And it's the story of Charlie Lang and his wife, Muriel Lang.
He's a New York cop played by Nick Cage.
She's a hairdresser.
They live in Queens played by Rosie Perez played by Rosie Perez.
They live in Queens, have a shitty one bedroom apartment.
She hates being in Queens.
He loves being in Queens.
He buys a lottery ticket at Herba Hest, ends up going to a diner,
has enough for the bill, but not a tip, offers the waitress played by
Bridget Fonda, either half of the winnings
or split the winnings of the lotto ticket or double the tip on the next day.
She doesn't think he's going to show up.
So she's like, whatever, cool.
Overnight, Nicolas Cage and his wife, they win the lottery
along with a shit ton of other people.
So their 64 million goes down to four.
He goes back, offers her her cut of it and she takes it.
Rosie Perez, very upset about the situation.
But Nicolas Cage kind of soothes her into it, being like, Oh, you know, tell everybody.
Everybody will think you're Muriel Lang, the hairdresser with the heart of gold.
And so she goes along with it.
They kind of get sucked into some high society things as Muriel
is really trying to push herself out of it.
And it's like, this is 1994 and you only have two million dollars.
You're going to blow it all real fast in New York City.
But they get through that.
Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda, they use their money to like help people,
like just enriching other people's lives.
Rosie Perez really hates it, decides that she wants a divorce.
They go through with said divorce and Muriel decides she wants all the money.
Lawsuit ensues.
Finalization of the film.
She gets all the money and Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda
go off and start their own life.
People from around New York send in monetary contributions to them.
They get away with six hundred thousand.
Plenty.
And that's the movie.
It's a very sweet film.
I really I think the most surprising thing for me in this film is seeing
Nicolas Cage's romantic lead and having a romantic plot that I wasn't immediately like,
Oh, this is off putting because so far every time we've seen him interact with a lady in
these films, it's been groovy or just ghostwriter.
Yeah, it all comes across so sweet.
This movie is just sweet.
It's very sweet.
It's not necessarily something I look for and probably wouldn't have watched this if I
wasn't doing a podcast about Nicolas Cage, but it was an enjoyable watch.
I mean, I watched it all.
Again, a lot of casting surprises.
Touch of the tooch.
Yeah, we got the tooch playing of Vannes, Bridget Fonda's husband, who she has been
trying to divorce, but didn't have money for strange husband Eddie.
OK, I got to I got to talk about that one for a second, because seeing shirtless tooch
balding, shirtless, ripped Stanley toochy being like a nagging asshole, I was like,
God, that's kind of hot.
When he stole the type, when he stole her macadamia nuts as she was leaving,
that was so good, and he just sits there eating them so proud of himself.
Her one thing as soon as she has two million dollars, the one thing she treats herself
to is a bottle of macadamia nuts.
Yeah, which is nice.
I mean, shows they're both, you know, more grounded people.
But we had the tooch.
I personally loved seeing Wendell Pierce in there every time I see him,
and especially in like a cop's uniform.
I just wanted to say, shit,
because I love the wire.
But we've also got Isaac Hayes playing the narrator Angel.
That is such a weird part of this film.
Yeah, it's it's kind of like that thread that ties it all together
and you don't even notice it until the end.
Well, like so it starts off with Isaac Hayes narrating kind of what we're about to see
about these two people.
And he just says, you know, and he's just he's talking to the camera.
It's breaking the third wall.
And he just ends his little starting narration with My name's Angel.
So like, OK, this is going to be some touched by an angel bullshit.
That's what I expected as well.
And he's like in the background.
He didn't touch anybody, though.
No, but he's in the background of almost every scene, every important scene.
And the whole movie is being played out in the media, like the New York Post.
Always their front page story is always about the cop and the waitress.
Right. And at the end of the film, when after the court proceedings,
after they lose everything, he runs to a restaurant, finds her there.
Or Nick Cage runs the restaurant, finds her there, and they decide that they're just going
to be happy together.
They don't need the money.
Isaac Hayes, who's been very clean cut and very well dressed the whole film, shows up
as a homeless man, like knocking at the window when they're closed, looking for food and
they bring him in, they feed him as they're kind of having their own private moment.
He's got a wrist mounted camera. Yeah, that's some Dick Tracy shit.
And it's just fucking weird. Snapping photos of them.
And he's been writing these newspaper headlines the entire film.
Yeah, they just got to give it up like, oh, he's a reporter for the Post.
And well, and then he runs out of the restaurant, he runs into a car and takes off the Jerry
Curl wig he's wearing.
Yeah. It just that was such like he could have just been an angel.
He's Angel Dupree is his name, and it wouldn't have changed the movie at all.
And it would have actually been better without that weird third act twist.
Yeah, they kind of I don't know.
It's what inspires New York to give them the money.
Yeah. Which.
OK, sweet. But just that was needlessly complicated and convoluted.
It was a really weak plot device until the very end when they needed it to pay off.
And that's what it was.
I did. It's hokey.
But I loved it. Yeah. Can we talk about how great a cop he is?
Like the first three minutes of this film are just talking about how Charlie is just
a good cop. He's a good cop.
He's a good cop. And he's a good guy.
What? And he's a good guy.
One of the first things he like, we see a scene of a blind man crossing the street
against the light in New York and cars are like screeching to halt.
And Charlie just runs in the street, hoists the blind guy over his shoulder and like
runs him to the other sidewalk. Yeah.
We see him delivering a baby on a city bus.
No, he ends every night between stickball with the boy with the neighborhood.
Hey, Zou with Hazel on this on the street while his, you know, Rosie Perez being the
worst 90s wife ever.
She was so perfectly annoying.
So one of her first lines in this film is her complaining to a customer while she's
doing her hair about how her husband has no drive.
He should at least be a detective, but no, he's got to wear that stupid uniform.
And she utters the words, if he was if he was on the take, he'd at least have initiative.
Yeah. And when they have their first argument in
the film, she's saying how she hates living in Queen in a one bedroom in Queens.
And he's like, it's fine. They're just bickering.
And as he's leaving the bathroom after brushing his teeth, she just like yells out from the
shower, I'm a person who needs money.
Yeah, you can really tell what she's all about. The worst 90s wife ever.
And when they do make it, when they do win the money, they go on a millionaire's cruise.
He runs off the boat. Well, Bridget Fonda showed up.
Yeah, he was having trouble with her cab to like help her out.
And then the boat takes off without them.
And they have a really nice date together.
And when the boat finally comes back in, he's working out and excusing his head for where
he was the whole night.
And she didn't even realize he was back.
Yeah, she was indifferent towards his presence.
Well, she was baiting the hook for the next rich guy she was going to marry.
I do appreciate the come up and she gets throughout the entire film because once they strike it
big, they go on a shopping spree and they do the very 90s movie thing of the woman coming
out in nicer clothes and the guy having more boxes throughout.
Yeah. And when she comes out in her new fur coat
and says she's finally happy, there's a premonition that she's going to get married.
There's a protest for his murder protests going on.
And she immediately just gets paint thrown on her.
I do like that every time she buys something, she's got that line of like, oh, now I can
finally be happy.
Oh, now I'm comfortable.
Now I now I have everything.
And it's always like followed by one more shopping scene going from like Barney's and
Tiffany's and all those other.
I don't know.
So what's the end for her?
Her story is concluded like after the divorce, she gets with the rich guy from the cruise
and the rich guy turns out to not be rich and just grifted her, took all of her money
and ran away.
Clears their bank accounts.
Random.
So then she gets a place in Brooklyn.
She's living with her mom in Brooklyn and is a hairdresser.
Not a hairdresser, a nail style.
She only does nails now.
She's a piece of shit.
Yeah, she's real annoying.
She is playing a very specific type of abrasive.
Yes.
As the film goes on, though, we do see.
So at one point, Charlie semi retires from the force after he is shot in the line of
duty.
Stopping robbery at their favorite bodega.
Yeah, Korean bodega, which they know is being robbed because when he goes in there, he asks
how Son is the owner of the shop and asks how his wife's doing, or where his wife is.
And Son says, oh, she's home with the flu and doesn't charge them for the coffee.
So when Nick Cage leaves the bodega, he just goes to his partner and is like, they're being
robbed.
Like what?
And like Son said, his wife has the flu and his partner goes, man, that bitch would work
if she's dying.
And then she.
Yeah, she didn't charge him.
So yeah, didn't charge me for the coffee.
It's like, oh, well, he is getting robbed then.
So Nick Cage goes in through the basement, comes up, takes out one of the criminals with
a can of beans from about five yards and then just he gets shot.
It's not fucked up and tackles another guy through the glass door.
I was saving that all day.
That was good.
Yeah, and I like that he tackles him through the door and he like gets up and his partner's
like, oh, blah, blah, blah.
And then Nicholas Cage notices that he gets shot in the arm and he just like faints.
Yeah, he just straight down on the guy he tackled again.
And the next scene is him getting like, you know, a medal for valor and he donates ten
thousand dollars of their winnings to the Policeman's Widows Fund.
And you can just see Rosie Perez just fuming.
Yeah, that ten thousand dollars of their two million is gone.
Yeah, she is not a good person.
No, no.
And that I mean, that's something we could talk about, like the things that Nicholas
Cage or Charlie Lang spent this money on is like donations to the Widows Fund.
Charlie and Yvonne went down and like bought like train fare.
Just had several tokens for everyone.
And just started giving them out and like treating everybody.
Which is what starts the divorce proceedings because when well, no, it's the next one.
When they go to the baseball park.
Yeah, they take all the kids from the neighborhood to bring all the kids there.
Baseball at a Yankee Stadium, whatever it is.
But I fucking love that one because I mean, that was just cool and it was really cool
what they did.
So like the kids were able to all play down on the diamond.
Nick Cage and his partner were like doing the pitching and everything.
And then they also set up this like photo op for the kids so they could jump on a trampling
and get a picture of them like, quote unquote, catching a ball as it was going over the wall.
So it was really nice.
It was fun.
Yeah, I liked it.
Very sweet.
You can see the start of their relationship because at this point, because Charlie and
Muriel, not Muriel, Charlie and.
Yvonne.
No funny business.
They're just they clearly are attracted to each other, but neither one of them is actively
pursuing it while he is married.
It's not till he gets kicked out of the house that they.
Stoop.
So but you see the early parts of those relationship and this is what really sold me on Nick Cage
being a leading man because I'm like, I remember being in love at one point.
Yeah.
Now I'm just cold and dead inside.
And that's a great segue for one scene I do want to talk about.
Oh, let me hear it.
When Charlie comes home after being shot, like the next scene is Charlie coming home
and his house is full of construction workers and his apartment is completely torn apart.
And I'm just and I'm just sitting there thinking about the time I walked into my home
and I no longer had a floor.
Yeah, I wasn't told about when I left the house that morning.
That's a hard one to come home to.
Yeah, no, it's never fun to come home to.
No.
So and then when he's like, where's my chair?
And Rosie Perez is like, I donated to Goodwill.
It's like, you could have told me.
And her response is like, you know, I thought we, you know, just gave stuff away without
telling each other.
Yeah.
It's like the one time she gets a proper dig in.
It was a good day.
I hated seeing her in that hard hat, though, just walking around with that clipboard.
I wanted to like push her down in the dirt, not not hit her or anything.
She wasn't trying to kill him.
Although there are definitely times like, oh, when he tells her about the two million
dollars, like giving that away, just like, oh, these two are going to fucking beat each
other up like that is murder.
Like people are murdered for less.
I don't think Charlie Lang would have ever lifted a hand against anybody that wasn't
clearly breaking the law.
He did grab her at one point.
Sure.
That was her lawyer's reasoning for him being an abusive husband.
The whole the whole civil case against him and Yvonne is just that's probably the one
part of the movie.
I'm like, this is the least interesting aspect of this and completely bullshit.
Charlie doesn't want any of the money.
He's like, you can keep the lotto winnings.
You know, I don't want anything.
I don't want need money to be happy, but she wants the money he gave away.
And the whole court case is it was her lotto ticket.
Even though he bought it, the city of New York, you know, decided against them.
Yeah.
They had to give back all the money.
Which is pretty wild.
That jury sucked.
Yeah, seriously.
Who would have sided with her, honestly, with Rosie Perez?
Yeah.
Well, she has such a charming voice.
Yeah.
Well, you notice she was never on the stand.
Oh, wait, she was.
Yeah, because she talked about her dead dad's.
The dream she had, which I'm oh, God, Charlie had the worst lawyer.
I'm like, fucking no, there's no way to prove that.
That is completely inadmissible.
Like, yeah.
Testimony.
I don't know.
There were a lot of details in this movie that I really enjoyed.
Weird little things.
And none of them had any impact on it.
Like, I really loved Angel's tie, his lobster tie that he was wearing at the top of the
movie.
I loved when they were robbing.
Those guys were robbing the bodega.
And like, as they were about to run out the door, one guy's like, give me a carton of
Virginia Slims.
You're going to knock over a bodega and take the silliest looking, like, you know,
Well, and like, lady brand cigarettes.
When they're robbing, when they're robbing that, well, they're men of weak constitution.
When they're robbing the bodega and Charlie's coming in from the basement, he knocked,
he like walks into some bottles.
So the crime, the thieves upstairs like, what was that?
What's back there?
It's like nothing.
There's no entrance back there.
Just, you know, a basement.
It's like, what was that noise?
Like rats, really big rats.
And then Charlie's coming up the stairs and there's a conveyor belt going up the stairs.
There's just a giant fuck all rat just like chill in there, just waving at him.
Yeah.
And a New York rat.
Yeah.
So we briefly, you touched on this.
So this is based loosely on a true story.
Cop named Robert Cunningham was a regular diner for years.
Phyllis Penzo was a waitress there for years.
And one day while he was having his lunch, he asked Phyllis for some lotto numbers.
She gave him three.
He came up with three more and he jokingly said, you know, if this wins, you know,
he'll tip her half the next day.
And the next day they won that night.
And the next day Robert and his wife came in and gave her half the money.
It's so loosely inspired by real events.
But I'm like, that's pretty cool.
From a Hollywood standpoint, this is a better movie than the real events.
Yeah.
And the fact that, you know, that could happen in the world is...
It could happen to you.
Hey.
Oh, nice.
I'm going to stop rambling.
That's a perfect spot to end that.
Do you have a quote for this film?
Yeah, I've got again, I've got a couple lines that I enjoyed.
Now, can I do mine since you have a couple?
Yes, you can.
I mean, this goes back to the bodega and when Charlie goes in there to order coffee,
the first thing he says to the owner's son is,
son, how are things in the mysterious East?
Like, oh, bad.
I'm not sure which one of these I like better, but in the beginning,
Charlie playing stickball with the kids and everything.
And Uriel shouts down to him like, I just ordered Chinese food.
Come inside. And he's like, I'll be in in a minute.
And then he gets some shit from Heizu, the kid who's just like, what are you whipped?
And Nicholas Cage just comes back with, no, I'm not whipped.
I've got adult responsibilities.
I do love Heizu.
It was a nice interaction.
Again, it's always Heizu.
I think Heizu and Charlie had the best kind of interactions for me.
Heizu asked him if he killed anybody today.
And Charlie just comes back with didn't even wound anybody.
I've been really slow.
And now we have two Nick Cage kids who don't suck.
That's true.
We got Heizu.
My rule is quickly a Heizu and handpan.
Yeah.
Balancing the scales.
I do.
I really did enjoy their his relationship with just the neighborhood, the kids.
Yeah.
Just a genuinely sweet guy.
It really came across like this guy loves the neighborhood.
He loves living in Queens.
I mean, there's a lot of like, I guess, Burrow pride in people out in New York.
I don't know.
Unless you're Rosie Perez.
Well, she sucked.
Yeah, she sucked.
But yeah, I mean, what did you think of him overall in the role?
Leading man, romance, hokey, nice guy cop.
He was such a good just every man in this film.
Like he's a cop and he's clearly in good shape, but they never really.
We don't get any shirtless cage in this.
No, just too cheesy.
They also don't like, you know, they don't give him hair plugs.
They're not trying to like hide the fact that he's got kind of a receding hairline.
Why are you looking at the top of my head?
I'm looking at your mouth for some reason.
That's why I'm doing it.
That's for you, Mayor.
Yeah, no, he's good.
He did a great job.
I think he gave me a cop that I didn't hate.
I didn't want to ask you about that.
No, no, I will not say fuck this cop.
This cop was all right.
Fuck all cops, but Nick Cage in this one movie.
The director on this hasn't directed much, but is a character actor.
A lot of TV stuff.
The one that stuck out to me was he was in an episode of Titus.
Oh, yeah, I saw that.
Yeah.
And he ends up matching up with Cage again later with Honeymoon in Vegas.
Yep, interesting.
I think also interesting is kind of the director of photography,
Caleb Deschanel, father of Zoe Deschanel and Emily Deschanel of Bones and New Girl.
I was about to ask you that when I remembered you and I had this conversation.
Yeah, so he worked together with Cage on this and then later in National Treasure.
So we'll be coming back to the old Caleb Deschanel.
I think the only other thing I wanted to say is that I had such a huge crush on Bridget Fonda
when I was growing up.
She's she's real cute.
Well, just I was really torn with these movies as to which one I thought had the more
endearing female lead.
Right.
Like they both crushed it.
Well, they were both really good.
I mean, I loved both of these characters, these characters and the way they were portrayed by
these actresses, but just both of these got me in what remains of my feels with
Sean Penn's first his first love, like that early young love.
The first time you see some boobs, the first time you jump naked in a lake and then have sex by it.
You've all done that.
You mean the time we got to see Sean Penn's nutsack in a PG movie?
Yeah.
I mean, you see two nipples.
It's just a little nutsack.
Yeah.
But just a little nutsack.
It's still good.
No, it was a fine nutsack.
It's not.
But no, both these movies brought me back to different parts of my growth as a human
being and just being reminded of like the sweet awkwardness of young love and how you
do so much for your first quote unquote love for no other reason than it's new and exciting.
And you've never felt these feelings before as in racing with the moon and kind of in
it could happen to you because we find out that Rosie Perez was
It was his high school girlfriend.
High school girlfriend and the only person he'd ever been with until him and Yvonne
touched butts later.
I can say that I've never grown as a human, so I can't identify with your statement.
But then, you know.
I came out of the womb just like this.
That's terrifying.
I've also been a slightly older person who was fairly settled in my life and
met someone new and also had that kind of new and exciting change.
Like I related to Sean Penn and Nick Cage and both these movies in their weird romantic
endeavors.
Also, I do want to just say the one joke that really did get a good laugh out of me in
It Could Happen to You when Yvonne's talking about her ex-husband Eddie who was an actor
and was talking about if they ever had a son, they should name the kid Al Pacino.
Al Pacino Biasi.
Yeah.
Weird.
Tucci was so good in that role.
I love finding the parallels, like the little things that both movies have.
And it keeps coming up in our things.
But sometimes this one's just even a little detail.
Both movies featured the leading man in a roller skating scene and not knowing how to
skate.
Yeah.
Nicholas Cage ends up skating into the lake at Central Park and Sean Penn just ends up
getting like, I don't know, skate thrown.
Cracked the whip.
You look that up?
No, I lived in a small town for a while and all we had was a roller rink.
Nice.
So yeah, they cracked that whip and he got launched right out the door.
Yeah.
But he handled it very well.
I enjoyed that.
Both got their penises touched because of this endearing act later.
Oh yeah.
Specifically because they're not good at skating.
I remember that line.
It's like, I'm only doing this because you can't handle roller skates.
I'm just going to start trying out things I see in Nick Cage movies on future dates.
Do it.
I highly recommend it.
Start with Ghost Rider.
Light myself on fire?
Yeah.
And then wiggle your bony bones.
OK.
With that, I mean, I know what I think should go forward.
I'm actually really curious what you guys think should advance because I had a hard time picking on this one, unlike fucking last week.
OK, so I'm going to say I think it should be It Could Happen to You.
Yeah.
It's a Nick Cage film.
Yeah, that's the thing that was really hanging me up on it, too.
It's like I actually prefer Racing with the Moon.
I just enjoyed it more.
But it's a Sean Penn movie with a supporting Nicolas Cage.
It Could Happen to You is a good movie.
Yeah.
I enjoyed watching it.
But I mean, we're finding the best Nicolas Cage movie.
And that's a Nicolas Cage movie.
Yeah.
Like, Nick Cage is really good in Racing with the Moon.
I highly recommend anybody watching Racing with the Moon.
Totally.
Like I said, this is, I think, the first time we have a head to head of two really enjoyable films.
Yeah.
And we didn't really talk about it.
But the heaviness of the subject of Racing with the Moon is so, I don't know, it felt like I was not prepared for it to be a movie.
That the central conflict revolved around getting an abortion.
We're already talking about two people are getting ready to go to war and the movie gets heavy.
Yeah.
And, you know, but also their personal lives and Nicolas Cage's specific cavalier attitude of going off to war has consequences and it's handled very well.
Yeah.
I think no matter what, I mean, we're going to push It Could Happen to You forward.
But people should watch Racing with the Moon.
Agreed.
It's a good movie.
And I think I could watch It Could Happen to You more often just because it is popcorn fluff a lot of the time.
Yeah, it's super light.
It's easy to watch.
And it's so charming.
It is.
All right.
So speaking of two very good banger movies to watch next time, we have World Trade Center and The Frozen Ground.
That'll be our funniest comedy podcast yet.
Definitely.
I can't wait.
I'm going to crush so many beers before this.
Oh, boy.
It's going to be a good one.
Yeah.
So you heard it here, folks.
This is Cage Match.
Rate us on whatever you listen to podcasts on and subscribe.
Yeah.
Don't forget to drop some comments down there in the down below.
We need more in the down below.
Yeah, no, I could hear it.
Don't gargle.
How did it feel?
Like that.
I could feel like I need this in my life.
Are we all going to do it?
No, don't do it.
I don't recommend it.
Oh, yeah, you have a weak throat.
No, I got in my nose when you made me laugh.
Well, that's a trick.
Never make me laugh.