Oh, God. Oh, my God.
Anyway, I keep going.
More rap. More rap.
Okay, hold on.
Yeah, I guess I guess we're just right back where we were a minute ago.
Yeah. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.
Just I'll tell you, I'm doing something to the knob. OK.
Yeah, OK. Yeah, I did it.
Perfect. Yeah, I felt it.
Yeah. You did it to the knob.
Yeah. We know from knobs.
Speaking of knobs, there's that moment in between worlds.
This is the way we introduce the.
Oh, look at that.
Did you see that, Sean?
That was a fucking segue.
That's how you do it. God damn segue.
Welcome. Welcome back to Cage Match, everybody.
Cage Magic, colon a roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage.
I'm your host, Sean, with my cohost, Nick and our producer, Peter.
Hello. And this week we have two guests.
Why don't you guys introduce yourselves?
My name's Roxanne and I am the wife of.
I'm going by Gary.
Yeah, we're going to go by Gary on the pod.
And we're here to talk to Cage and real hyped about it.
Thanks for having us. Love listening to you guys.
And it feels like a real privilege to be here.
Really excited for it. I think something good on this one.
This is going to be great.
So Roxanne, you were saying about Nick Cage's genitals.
Yeah. Way to go, Rox.
The word knob elicited a certain memory in me from yesterday
when Gary and I were watching between worlds for the first time.
Only time. Hopefully not the last.
We get an annual tradition.
Well, there was this one scene,
but of all the scenes in the movie, I looked over at you and I like
I did not know what my eyeballs were seeing.
And that is this part when Nick Cage's character was his name.
Joe is having sex with Billy slash his dead wife, Mary.
And Billy's mom comes home.
So Billy jumps up. Nick Cage gets out of bed.
He has undies on apparently.
And he's wearing a T-shirt and we think he's Donald Ducking it for a minute.
But you can see something sticking out the bottom of the shirt.
I looked around and I just said, what is going on with this guy's penis?
This was the second week in a row where we thought we might have seen
Nick Cage's dog for the first time.
Yeah. Y'all are still waiting for that moment.
Yeah. Fingers crossed.
How are you going to find your penis double?
Yeah, sure. You got to have your dick twin. Dick twin.
Right. That was that.
Penis double sounds like a stump person.
Dick twin is like just a life affirming moment.
Yeah. Makes you feel right with everything.
And also probably a person's name.
I bet there is a dick twin out there selling used cars.
I did. I went over to a friend's house once.
I'd never been there before.
It was in a gated community.
And I had to know her dad's name to get in,
which I didn't know.
I texted her and she told me, just tell them that, you know, rich friend.
And I was like, no, I need to know your dad's name.
And that was her dad's name.
Got me in.
Oh, we're in the weeds now.
How do we get back to Nick Cage?
Yeah, we know.
This is what I guess.
So this week, we are talking about
Vampire's Kiss from 1988
and Between Worlds from 2018.
Two movies where something supernatural might be happening.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Backtracking a little bit.
This is Cage Match, where we take 64 Nicolas Cage movies
and pick them up head to head bracket style
to determine the best Cagiest movie of all time until he makes more.
And we have to do extra content on Patreon.
Sign up for our Patreon.
It's the only way you find out.
Find out what?
I don't know. The truth.
Yeah.
You know, I actually want to ask about Peter is making
best and Cagiest.
You say that like the same thing.
Have you all wrapped about whether or not that's different?
Is the Cagiest film also going to be the best?
No, we have to make this distinction because in like week two,
I eliminated adaptation for Army of One, which was the wrong decision.
I'm still mad about it.
It's the best decision.
It is the most Cagiest film.
One of the most Cagiest films we've watched thus far.
Yeah. I mean, where else are you going to see Nick Cage
hang gliding to Afghanistan with a with a katana, a katana
and a boombox on a red, white and blue hang glider?
That's true.
I do think there's an argument to be made, though, that between worlds
is in the running for that.
He literally breaks a fourth wall at one point in the film.
No, it's a cagey ass film.
I have things to say about it.
So all right.
Who wants to give me the general one paragraph synopsis of this movie?
I can do you one better. I can do it in one sentence.
Are you ready?
A ghost is taking over Billy's body.
Like some sort of hermit crab.
So Nicholas Cage plays Trucker Joe.
Trucker Joe.
Joe Majors.
Non-union as far as we can tell.
And no one else you've ever heard of is in this stuff.
That's not true.
Franka Potente is in here and she was run Lola Run.
Oh, you're right.
Otherwise, nobody else is in it.
Yeah. Nobody.
Nobody matters.
And L.A.B. Mitchell is Billy.
That's the cast.
Oh, well, you forgot about Hopper Penn.
Sean Penn's kid.
That's Sean Penn's kid.
Yep, I did not know that.
Well, the tree would have known that if we could have seen his wiener.
That's true. You can always tell by the balls.
The family resemblance would have been the family jewels.
That's why they're called the family jewels.
Yeah, that's why I'm at Hopper Penn and Dick twin.
So you start together.
So so Joe was a truck driver.
Seems to be down on his luck.
Oh, so oh, some money on things.
Unclear.
Well, you had a mortgage and he had a truck payment.
Does he still have a mortgage?
Well, I mean, he had a mortgage.
I mean, he technically still has that property.
Right.
I mean, it seems fairly abandoned.
He's finds himself in a truck stop where he decides to yuck some woman's yum.
She's correct.
You know, fucking she's got an asshole there.
Yeah.
So the woman's getting what's her name?
Well, that's a really good question.
Choked out in a bathroom stall.
Do you ask for consent before you stop a choking?
Oh, damn.
That's deep.
I think if you're I think if you're in public space.
Yeah.
You let it fly.
No, I think if you're in public space doing that kind of act,
you're unconsensually having people witness it, you know,
so you're already kind of breaking that.
And so if you butt in, it's like, well, you started it.
You you butted into my shit.
Now I'm button into yours.
And then if they say, yo, you're yucking my yums,
you know, see yourself out the door.
But that's my take on it.
It doesn't have to be the final word.
It doesn't really give them time to explain their behavior.
He just kind of kicks that guy's ass.
Right. Truly.
What if somebody busts in and it turns into like a Mexican choke off
where everybody's choking everybody and like everybody's having a good time?
That's best case scenario.
What's your safe word, Nick?
My safe word?
Parallelogram.
That's a good one.
It is a good one.
Peter and I like one weekend randomly found out we had the same safe word.
It wasn't for sexy reasons.
Don't ruin the mystery, Peter.
What was it?
Rutabaga.
Oh, that's a good one.
Very lyrical.
So it turns out Julie can travel between worlds by drowning
and or being choked in truck stop bathrooms.
Peter, it looked like you were about to say something.
I was going to say she can also get choked out in other places, Sean.
Oh, that's true.
I mean, up to this point, we only know one place she can do this.
It's an NDE.
She has to have an NDE, basically.
It doesn't necessarily matter how.
That's the sense I got from it.
Near-death experience for the lay people.
Thank you.
Us enlightened folk over here.
We're in on it.
All of us people who are like down with all these choking terms.
I was going to say, I don't know that sex.
That's a good point, though, Rob.
Stick with me after the pod, I'll show you.
I'm curious if you could choose your own NDE experience to have to bring back people from
the dead.
What would you want it to be?
Oh, damn.
Drowning is really like in the ice water.
That was a really killer one.
I really enjoyed that from an aesthetic level.
Looking at someone drowning under a sheet of ice was very pleasing to watch.
So I really like that one on like a visual level.
You're probably too distracted by the cringe worthy David Lynch homage that permeated the
intro and the whole film.
It was the same composer.
Yeah, Battle of the Menti.
Right.
Yeah, I just found that whole thread really hard to watch.
Cringe worthy is the word I'll use.
I really enjoyed some of the stuff that David Lynch has done and I think making an homage
to Twin Peaks specifically is kind of a cool thing to do, but I just thought it didn't
come off very well.
The piece of like Coast Salish art that was above the fireplace and they're in Louisiana.
I was like, give me a break.
At least try.
So Billy crashes, so Nick Cage chokes Julie out and then something comes back.
With consent.
And something comes back.
And we briefly see Julie between worlds.
So they take Billy back home.
Joe loses his truck.
Billy has been, what's the word?
Got him out of the brains again.
Higacked.
Possessed.
Thank you.
Possessed by Joe's ex-wife.
They get into a sexual relationship with Billy's mom and things get weird involving him just
getting a handy jay under a blanket while Billy's mom's in the kitchen.
Holding a whole meat.
Yeah, from his wife, but from her daughter.
Yeah.
So is it really wrong?
I mean, he tries to explain it away when the mom catches them going at it later.
It's like, it's my wife.
It's like, that's my daughter.
Can't they just be the same thing?
So there's a lot of action involving ghosts.
This is a horny ass ghost movie.
Oh, I love a good horny ghost movie though.
It's hornier than Ghost.
Hornier or less horny than Drive Angry.
Two horny ghost movies.
Oh shit, right.
This one had more boning down, but Drive Angry had more tit.
Oh yeah, Drive Angry was a solid movie.
This was a great movie too.
I loved this film.
This film was awesome.
Yeah, I could definitely watch it right now.
You guys are wrong.
Well it's a good thing you don't get a vote, Peter.
The only votes that ever count are mine and Sean's, but first mine.
Well you know, I'll join you in that.
I loved it as well, but not in the way it wanted me to love it.
No, that's fair.
I genuinely enjoyed it.
This movie is bad and I love that about it.
Oh, 100%.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, yeah, the twin peaks homage, him having sex in two timelines and reading from his
journal, they just hit you over the head with it.
Over.
The black nurse who has psychic powers.
It was so in your face from front to back the whole time.
They kept on it.
I do have a question about the nurse.
You can't tell me they wrote more and then didn't get around to using it.
She says things like, leave that to us.
Who's us?
What are you?
It's our business.
Don Cheadle can give people glimpses.
Yeah, he's a magical black man.
Maybe she's a magical black woman.
There were some good jams in this film.
Yeah, there was a couple of black flag songs and that song at the end.
What was that one?
Leader of the pack.
Yeah, I really didn't understand that choice.
I mean, if I'm going to choose anything from the movie to not understand, I don't know
why I'm saying that one.
But the wall of sound, like the Phil Spector vibe somehow made sense to me aesthetically
with the house burning down.
I don't know if it's because of what we know about Phil Spector or I don't know.
It just for me, it made some sort of harmony together.
But you're right.
I can't quite decode exactly why that song Phil Spector ghost name ghost movie and all
tracks.
There are levels to this movie.
I didn't even realize we're there.
I know.
All right.
We're going to call it now.
This movie wins.
We're done.
So let's discuss the sex in two timelines because it's been brought up a few times and
there's no description for people who.
In that situation, Nicolas Cage is having sex with the daughter of the chick that he's
been hooking up with who sees dead people.
Billy Mary with our Billy Mary because it's Mary, his wife's name and Billy, the daughter's
name.
He's having sex with the DM.
Nick just pounded away on a BM.
This is terrible.
This is our content.
So he's pounding away on a BM and he's having like flashbacks to like banging away on his
wife in the before times.
It was in his truck cab.
I mean, I don't really know what happens in these movies.
Or in truck cabs.
Oh, I know what happens in truck cabs.
We've seen two movies now where we see things happen in truck cabs.
So he's banging away on her and having visions of it being his wife.
What's creepy is then he pulls out his own journal and starts reading from it.
Well, yeah.
OK, so yeah.
That cop smacked me.
Like what in the world is going on?
She's from memories.
Mary's like, just read to me from memories.
And he does.
Memories by Nicolas Cage.
Yeah.
Which if you'd like to know my favorite quote, it is just Mary says, read to me from memories,
Joe.
And Joe says again.
All sexing.
And this is everything that he reads.
And this is like a memoir or some kind of story written by Nicolas Cage that for some
reason he just has a manuscript of.
And it gives a little like, I enjoyed the art to try out.
You rode your hat penis and she straddled my mouth.
Your tongue's mingled above me.
Your peach juice cascaded over and upon my golden cock.
And I knew that we were a family, a tribe, our heat melting the snow beneath us on top
of the mountain as the Inuit applauded.
Just brutal.
I totally brutal.
And I could give or take most of that until he got down to and the Inuit applauded.
How could you take most of that?
I was like, yeah, that's happened to you in your life.
You can handle that.
I'm pretty callous.
I don't know, but having Nicholas Cage describe a freeway.
Fair.
That's fine.
But now you've got Eskimos watching in the background, golf clapping.
And it's like, this is good.
This is exactly what I want.
Nicholas Cage to write in his memoir.
Oh, very cagey.
He truly did write that.
Also, I read that he wrote that poem specifically for this movie.
Amazing.
I don't remember.
I was doing some research.
It'd be weird if he wrote it for anything else, though.
That's a good point.
I found the through line of these two films.
Weird shit Nick Cage is into.
I have something for that for Vampire's Kiss.
This movie is kind of all over the place.
I don't really know how to explain it.
I genuinely enjoyed Nick Cage's performance for the most part.
It's weird that we've seen, we're halfway through this now, we've seen 38 Nick Cage
films, 32 Nick Cage films.
I went to art school.
That's why I do a Nick Cage podcast.
We've seen 30, we've seen the cage and 32 roles right now.
And every time we see him, for the most part, I don't see Nick Cage doing a bit.
He's a good actor.
I believe to his Joe.
Yeah, he played super just drunk, trashy, traumatized trucker.
Realistically, it met all my expectations of drunk, trashy, traumatized truckers.
We've definitely seen him act drunk poorly and be not believable.
We've seen him do it really well.
We've seen him do it really well as well.
He's very inconsistent in his drunk.
I was going to say my favorite moment of acting in this film was the first scene where he's
wandering through the truck stop and looking at all the chips and soda and he's drinking
a bit gulp or whatever.
I really felt like I was in that truck stop.
It elicited the feeling of being in a space like that with the big, bright lights at early
o'clock in the morning and hearing some lady getting choked out in the bathroom.
Classic truck stop.
Classic home in there.
You know.
And you gotta put your ho-ho down.
Yeah, he turns down the hostess, drinks at the counter, which I don't understand.
I do love...
You mean the dessert bar?
But yeah, he was good being down and out.
I found it far less believable when he was frolicking in the hose.
Oh yeah.
Okay, so there's a few times in this film where we see something that might be a dream
sequence.
Like when he gets to Julie's house the first time, she invites him in and then it just
cuts to them like rutting on the couch.
Then they go inside.
Is that the word you want to use?
Who says just rutting?
It's a common term for getting down.
Gross.
Like deer.
I know a lot of Australian podcasts.
This is about a truck driver.
Nothing he does is nice.
He's not making love.
He's rutting.
He was prone boning.
But he has a vision of fucking this woman on the couch before he goes in the house,
which is just sloppy editing.
I now realize.
But is he maybe psychic?
Or you know, he's just goal oriented.
Also, alright, you find out that the soul of your dead wife is in Billy.
Play it cool dude.
Why are you just waiting for her to run down to the store real quick to have an affair?
Cool it.
I don't think his ex-wife's ghost is all that good at coolin'.
I mean, so they do establish that she had been at the funny farm for a while.
I glazed over that.
Yeah.
I didn't catch that.
I didn't catch that she was in the nuthouse.
She wasn't doing so good.
She doesn't do good on her own.
I mean, crazy is sexy.
And it turns out the way her and their daughter died was he went on a three day run and her
cigarette lit the house on fire.
Well, she killed him.
You go ahead.
You say it.
That's what he believes is what I'm saying.
And then we later learn the truth.
Which is that she killed her daughter and herself.
In a plea for attention.
Which is wild.
I've definitely known some people who would do something like this.
Like, not to that extreme.
But like, I don't think anybody's gonna like...
No, it's just like I've dated some chicks who've done and said some shit.
Or it's like, no, your thinking's not right there.
You cheated on me.
It's not my fault.
But she was just trying to be like, oh, he'll...
She kept saying, I thought you'd show up before.
It's like, okay.
She's not good at making a safe experiment of killing the child though.
That's one of those safe experiments.
I don't know any good way of like...
He's not gonna show up if there's a stopper on the knife.
Do knives have stoppers?
Most of them do, yeah, for sure.
So it's gotta be a real knife with no safety on it.
And you put that in the baby and then your husband will show up before the baby dies.
It's good.
So welcome to cage match.
So when they get back to their old house, which is only half burnt out, because he says
like they died in a fire, but the living room wasn't burnt out.
The baby's bedroom wasn't burnt out, although there was a burnt jack in the box in it.
If you watch the trailer, you're expecting this very jumpy horror film with burned jack
in the boxes and like, you should see how bad I am with a knife.
Like comments like that.
But then you watch the film and it isn't jumpy like that at all.
Even when they do the dream sequences, it feels like the tone, like psychologically,
doesn't really shift all that much.
Yeah, is he psychic?
Is this a vision?
Like, it's really hard to tell what the hell the mood is in these different worlds and
to patch it all together.
I thought it was a little manic in that regard.
Written by the director also.
Yeah.
And then we get to see Nick Cage in a banana hammock.
Man, and it's awesome.
It's just what I pictured, which is a lot of like my body with Nicolas Cage's face.
I make this happen all the time.
You make it the opposite direction where it's Nicolas Cage's body and my face.
I just want this to be shared for anyone who's not on Reddit.
Peter, please describe how I was described in the last City of Angels poster.
Oh, fuck.
What was what was the exact the exact quote was?
We need to just give a shout out to whatever user it was.
Hang on.
Yeah, we'll find it.
And also, Nick, this is where the comments are, apparently.
Yeah, Reddit is where the comments are.
I was going to ask how do fans reach out to you?
Yeah.
So Reddit would be the primary way that people could interact with us.
And it's just a cage match pod.
We also do try and make our Patreon have some interesting shit on there.
I try and throw little clips and goofs and previews into that.
And that's patreon.com slash cage match.
So on Reddit, we had posted about our previous episode, which was City of Angels against
Kiss of Death.
So I ended up doing a Photoshop job of City of Angels, which is like a really hokey.
Oh, it's so good.
It's like holding and kissing.
It's very, very sweet and precious.
One of my ex wife's favorite films.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
It's why you're not married anymore because this is our favorite film.
So in this particular Photoshop job, Nick ended up as Nick Cage and Sean ended up as
Meg Ryan and Reddit user heartsplayer721 commented, makes Meg Ryan look like a blonde Robert Downey
Jr.
I'll take it.
That is going on my dating profile.
You look charming in this picture.
I look charming everywhere motherfucker.
It's only when I open my mouth that things kind of get sketchy.
We now know that you look good with tits and blonde hair though.
All right.
Oh, what were we talking about?
Oh yeah, this movie.
It ends weird.
Nick Cage loses his shit.
Julie shows up with Billy's boyfriend.
Julie gets shot, has a tussle with Mary's spirit.
Billy comes back.
They leave.
Everyone else dies.
Yup.
They're just desperate to do a David Lynch homage at the end with Wally's sound and
tragedy and it's just clunky as hell.
Like his death.
Can we just talk about that a little bit?
Like what the fuck?
Oh, that's right.
He lights himself on fire.
And smokes a cigarette.
And then puts a cigarette on himself.
I'm pretty sure if I lit myself on fire, even if I was really resolved to do that, I'm almost
positive that the second I was on fire I would be screaming my fucking ass off.
He might have been suffering from some real like disassociative stuff at that point because
he was pretty fucking ganked out.
Yeah, he was pretty weird in that scene.
I just, I like you.
He was half in the... he was between worlds himself.
I do like... that's when he should have cracked his sparkle letter.
I do like the whole sequence of picks up gas can, pours it on himself, lights cigarette,
is on fire, takes one drag, then puts the cigarette on himself.
As if he just needs to hurt that little bit more.
And you could see the flame.
You could see the cigarette going.
It wasn't it wasn't in any way overshadowed by the giant flames engulfing his body from
the gasoline.
You could see the little cigarette burn going into his heart.
It was a new unique flame.
And then there is this second ending.
That's right.
You saw that coming.
Where, yeah, where a young Joe takes a shotgun while his dad is yelling at his mom and points
the gun at his dad and his dad's like, finally stand up for yourself and then credits.
It seems weird to add that at the very end.
It's like, okay, the movie's over.
It's exactly right for this film.
It made no sense.
It didn't fit at all.
It's perfect for this movie.
Yeah.
For this one, there was there were no fun facts I could find by like Google, but I
did find the most amazing user reviews.
And I want to read just a couple to you.
One of those rare Nicolas Cage movies, when he comes to play, what makes watching him
feel like work?
If you saw Mandy and wished more Nicolas Cage movies were dark, weird, and personal, watch
Between Worlds and be careful what you wish for.
Cage makes four of these a year and usually two of them are good, so Between Worlds isn't
one of the good ones.
So my quote is when he first meets Julie and she asks him to be as a family, he pulls out
a picture of his wife and daughter and he goes, wife and daughter, you like whoops,
they're dead.
You know, I don't have a quote.
I just have the image of Joe getting sprayed by a garden hose while he's doing the Captain
Morgan leg step in the air.
So profound.
Yeah, all over a motorcycle like washing a motorcycle.
Like everybody has to be on top of it to do it.
I just want to shout out that I think a lot of the sex scenes were really inspired by
showgirls.
The way that Billy is throwing herself around on Nick Cage's lap feels very reminiscent
of the pool sex scene and showgirls.
You know, and that might be a subtle David Lynch homage.
That's true.
Yeah.
I'm wondering if Nick Cage has like a contract bump like a significant contract bump for
sex scenes where he's fully disrobed because in his more recent movies that we've seen
him have sex scenes in now, there's always and I'm really just referring to Drive Angry
in this, there's clothing like he had the banana hammock on or in Drive Angry he still
had pants on.
I don't think he's willing to take his pants off and do the old bump and grind.
No, I don't think he's willing to take his pants off in general.
I mean, he took his pants off for this and we saw the banana hammock.
And two of you angels.
Now, again, stunt dick.
Stunt butt too.
A butt and a dick are different.
I understand that.
Wait, what?
How?
A butt is not a dick twin.
Alright, I do have a quote for this.
Oh, okay.
Sorry, Peter.
So at one point, Julie comes in and is like, so do you want a beer?
And his response was, does the tin man have a sheet metal cock?
That's right, I forgot about that one.
Classic.
Gary.
Earlier you talked about the whole film being manic and disjointed.
Also shout out mental illness.
Shout out mental illness.
That's right.
If you've got mental health problems.
That's the other connection of these two films.
Just find yourself a lady who talks to ghosts.
Now you have to have interdimensional sex.
But I think both of these films, at first I had no idea why these two films were put
together in this.
Random chance.
Okay, well, let's pretend you made an intentional choice.
We will pretend that we did.
Because I do feel that both films have this in common.
Maybe as a complete Nicolas Cage amateur, maybe this is a broader theme here.
But the movies as a whole, both of them, I think really embodied this thing about Nicolas
Cage of there being this question of is he doing something that's just trash or is he
creating something that's really interesting, meaningful, interesting art?
And his acting style is pretty wild out there, manic, disjointed, however you want to call
it.
Both of these films are that as well.
I think the difference is that Between Worlds doesn't do it very successfully, I would argue.
And I think Vampire's Kiss nails it.
I think that the way that Vampire's Kiss is fucking crazy is really genius.
Well this was something I actually wanted to talk about this week and start doing is
where do we put this on the bad actor, bad movie, good actor, good movie spectrum for
Nick Cage?
Is this good acting in a bad movie?
Is it bad acting in a bad movie?
Where would you put this?
You've seen the Venn diagram of this, right?
Yeah.
I think, you know, I thought he was alright in this up until the end.
I wouldn't say his performance was bad.
He put the work in.
I wouldn't say it's like a top 50% for him.
I think he said, of course not.
Honestly I disliked the story so much, the film from like a director and writing standpoint
so much that I would say it's great acting on his part because he actually made it a
little bit watchable for me, honestly.
Because I just thought the whole thing was horrendous and aesthetically speaking, what
you were saying Roxanne, I think the 30 years that separate these films from 88 to 2018,
just the general aesthetic of the two was so stark.
I think all the warmth and the color, the texture, watching Vampire's Kiss to me visually
is so interesting and this was grotesque.
I just loved the aesthetic of Vampire's Kiss so much more.
I was trying to do a lot of the watching for these around a trip to Las Vegas and so some
of it happened to be just like I was watching movies on airplanes.
Oh, that's perfect for this film.
I had watched Between Worlds beforehand and I was like, oh okay, I shouldn't watch Between
Worlds again on the flight.
You should not watch that movie in a public place.
I know there's going to be a lot of boobs and stuff like that and I don't want to have
to absurd as funny.
Actually surprisingly few boobs.
They're usually covered up.
There's a lot of side notes.
There's very little nipple but there's a lot of boobs.
I think that's breaking the fifth wall because then you're watching that scene where they're
doing the unconsensual kinky sex act on a plane, unconsensually showing that act to
your seat mates.
That's gangster.
Which is double negative so totally consensual.
I grew up in San Francisco.
That's how this works.
Yes.
Well, I ended up watching Vampire's Kiss and then the flight attendant showed up as
soon as the first top came off so I had that experience.
I don't like try to cover my laptop.
I'm embarrassed for myself now.
Did you really put your hands in front of it?
Oh, that's perfect.
I was just like, don't look at it.
Don't look at my shing.
I closed it with the volume switched from my headphones to the computer.
You know the only thing that would make that story better?
I just want a sparkling water please.
The only thing that would make that story better, flight attendant walked up behind you with
Hayden and just stood there for a while.
I was like, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
The only thing that would make that story better, flight attendant walked up behind you with
Hayden and just stood there for a while.
No, that would've been fine.
I would have turned the volume up then.
I did get a guy as soon as I shut it and she left, the guy across the aisle for me was
like, hey man, I really like that you're watching that movie.
That's one of my favorite movies.
Was it Nicholas Cage?
No.
He's a guy from Portland.
Shout out to guy from Portland who works for Seattle Lighting.
Did you tell him about our podcast?
I did.
Check it out. So if you listen, thanks, buddy.
Cool. Vampires kiss.
Nailed it.
That's the best one today.
I always do the landing.
All right.
So this is why you guys wanted to be on this podcast.
So why don't you sell us vampires kiss real quick?
What's this film about?
What isn't this film about, really?
I agree. It's mythic in proportion.
So, OK, we talked about a second ending for Between Worlds.
I thought the second ending of this film was also extremely meaningful and poignant.
Straight to the ending.
Well, this is what I like.
Well, it's actually it's the beginning.
The beginning of the ending, they form a circle because we're talking about vampires and eternity.
It's all there. It's really beautiful.
I thought this film was really powerful.
Really stoked to be talking about it.
Yeah, I think it's about New York City.
I think it's about U.S. America.
I think it's about capitalism.
It's about race. It's about so many different things.
I think that the the monster motif is so it's such a powerful container and you can put so much into it.
I think that's why we're just going to see for as long as we live monster movies.
You're going to see the zombies and the ghosts and the vampires are never going away
because they point in almost any direction you want them to go.
And I thought this film in particular, they used the vampire just exquisitely,
like really, really well done.
Yeah, I agree.
So for context, Gary and I came to this film in the month of October
when the Criterion Channel was running a series of vampire movies.
And so we watched a bunch of vampire films all in a row.
I'm sure maybe some of the people listening to this are much better acquainted with vampire stuff than me.
And me too.
I was not me.
We're vampire noobs.
Haven't seen Twilight.
But we geeked out, we watched a bunch.
We went hard on vampires for a minute.
So if somebody wants to make a sex joke, feel free.
And something I learned as we did this was that there's roughly two categories of vampire films.
There's vampires who are out to feed or vampires who are ready to lay down their eternal burden and die.
And this movie is kind of neither, which really makes it stand out in the vampire canon.
And I think, yeah, so some really interesting things.
Basically, Nick Cage's character in this film starts out as a normal human who is kind of hoity toity.
He works at a... what are you laughing at?
Well, normal if you call a sadistic capitalist normal, yes.
Well, which it is.
Just if I can interject real quick.
Nicolas Cage plays Peter Lowe.
Maria Conchita Alonso plays Alva.
Jennifer Beals is Rachel.
Elizabeth Ashley is Dr. Glaser.
So Nicolas Cage's character is a... works at a fancy literary, like a publishing agency in New York City.
He's desperately, it seems, searching for love, connection, sex, something.
We don't really exactly know, but he's after women in bars and looking to fill something in his life.
And meaning. He's in Jungian analysis.
Yeah, he has a therapist and...
An analyst.
That's correct. An analyst.
Up in a high tower in Manhattan.
So he's not in a happy place.
And one of the women that he takes home turns out to be a vampire who bites him and continues to feed on him.
With the lamest pickup line of all time.
He leans over his shoulder and says, I like your earrings.
It always works.
Yeah, juxtaposed against his pickup line later in the movie.
He just gives her that solid look.
Takes a chomp.
We'll talk about those teeth later.
More physical jokes for all the people out there on our audio podcast.
Yeah, that's Nick's new thing.
Really big on this.
It's very avant-garde, Dick. I love it.
I think Nick Cage will be proud of it.
I just discovered visual comedy recently and I'm trying to share it with people.
I think it's going to be a big craze.
So Rachel, the vampire who he meets and bites him.
Does she?
I mean, this is really what this movie comes down to me.
Does he think he's becoming a vampire?
Or is this just a guy in the city who becomes the raving lunatic on the corner?
Oh, you know, if she doesn't bite him and he actually is just becoming more and more himself
as the picture of like an unhinged white male American hero capitalist publishing Wall Street guy.
I mean, that's even more terrifying than a vampire.
I mean, that's what this movie is about.
After his first night with Rachel, he goes to shave and he's like humming to himself in the morning
and he cuts himself shaving.
That's when he first see the bandaid after she bit him.
And then he goes into his bedroom with the coffee and he hands it to him and he just starts shaking.
Right, because there's nobody there.
That's a brilliant insight because they break one of the rules of vampire films.
If he is a vampire, which is that she keeps feeding on him after he thinks he's a vampire,
which that's no, that's a no-go.
You can't, vampires don't feed on each other.
There's all sorts of levels for how to turn somebody.
Usually in my experience, there's an exchange where it would be like the vampire feeds, drains,
and then replenishes with their own tainted blood, which we never see.
So like a lot of times, like the familiar or whatever the thrall of the vampire would be used just for feeding
and then they would get like they wouldn't be drained and then replenished,
but they would get like a taste of it.
And that's how like Renfield and whatnot would have his powers.
It's a boon given through the blood, usually to turn somebody in my experience of vampires.
Turning people.
Yeah.
Peter, have you ever seen Nick in daylight?
Not once.
Interesting.
I do always wait for you to invite me into the house, too.
Fuck he does!
Yeah.
Shit.
It's not the locked door at all.
What I'm thinking about right now is like I feel like I invited myself onto this podcast to sound smart.
Now I feel very dumb because I feel like I missed the whole point.
But also that's wonderful because you know, it's right there in the title, Vampire's Kiss.
Like he maybe he doesn't get bitten.
He gets just the kiss and everything is just in his mind.
Let's break these things down.
It certainly tracks when he runs into her later, too.
Yeah.
No, like let's break this down because so he meets Rachel at a bar, takes her home.
Also hang on.
I got to talk.
Did you notice that it was David Hyde Pierce at the bar?
Yes.
I'm Josie.
Call that right away.
She was like, yeah, David Hyde Pierce and Ben Stiller's sister are having a chat at the bar before he goes and hits on.
I did not catch Ben Stiller's sister, but I didn't dig into the credits on that one.
I would have recognized her.
So the movie starts with him in therapy talking about how he brought this woman home.
He was like really into her.
But immediately was just the next day was like, get out.
Meets Rachel.
They go home.
She gets she gets the chompin.
But then like the very next scene is him giving her coffee in the morning, but she's not there.
And that's when he starts to get a little weird.
And then she starts appearing in his office, like in his bedroom when he's supposed to go meet the woman he's dating at the beginning of the film, but he doesn't leave his apartment because Rachel doesn't want him to.
We you know, we keep seeing Rachel over and over again and she has the fangs.
And then at the end of the film, she's got the good thing.
And at the end of the film when he's after he's done a bitey murder, he sees Rachel again and she's mocking him because you know, they're nothing alike.
And his imaginary vampire girlfriend has an imaginary boyfriend and then he goes and confronts her on the dance floor.
Also, shout out all the vampire movies have industrial clubs, industrial dance clubs, goes and grabs her on the dance floor.
And he's like, remember me?
And she's like, oh, yeah, you're Rob Lowe.
No, Peter Lowe.
Peter Lowe.
It's like, oh, you're Peter, right?
Yeah, we met.
And he's like, you break up with me.
And like she has no idea who he is.
Like this has all been like an affectation of his mind.
Like I grew up in San Francisco.
There are weird people in San Francisco.
And you always wonder how someone gets to like screaming on the street corner.
And this whole second second half of this movie for me was just that's where that guy started.
The first act of this film.
I'm like, this needs to stop.
I did not enjoy it.
As soon as that idea clicked from him, like, oh, this is this is heart wrenching.
This is this is this is amazing.
Yeah, truly.
And I think something that's important, too, is the way that it shows not only how the guy ends up like that on the street corner,
but it connects that lunatic on the street corner to the guy in the office who's harassing his workers, who's tormenting his secretary, all that.
His most vampiric act in the whole film is what he does with all the I mean, when he hangs up late, when he hangs up the phone with the guy who's like, oh, it's totally chill.
Don't worry about it.
I don't even need that.
It's it's a memento.
Yeah, that's what I was looking for is a meaningless memento.
And then she's desperate to be relieved of this responsibility.
And he goes berserk on her.
It was so brutal.
I love the dynamic of Peter as a boss in quotes in this situation.
To me, he comes across as such a low level executive in this movie.
I think the stress leads him to over project a lot and kind of make these power plays in like a mental capacity against his secretary,
because she's the only one that he really has any control or any power.
That's like the limit of his control, even when he's talking to the other executives after he confronts Alva in the restroom.
Yeah, when he chases her in the bathroom.
To that point, one of the things I read about this film is the affectation of his voice that very mid Atlantic.
So British.
I read that he was sort of modeling himself after his father and the styling of Americans who want to sound fancier than they are.
Okay, yeah, I like the drum right and run for president about it.
That is called the transatlantic accent that came about in the late 1800s, 1900s.
And it was a way of people in the East Coast, specifically kind of affecting a semi British, semi American completely its own thing.
Yeah, we're back to being a history podcast.
Fuck yeah.
The whole dialect podcast.
The whole aspect is that of Peter's it's not Nicholas Cage's performance.
The character of Peter wants people to think he's a bit of an aristocrat and smarter than he actually is.
So he puts on that performance and it goes in and out.
Yeah, his accent so inconsistent.
Maybe that works well in totally.
It further is the point that he's he's a phony.
I mean, to the to the point you were making Nick about his power over Alva.
It like it almost makes a fool of him like, oh, look who he has power over in this society.
Someone who has very, very little power and one dress.
One one tablecloth.
She lives with her mother and her brother and they live in the birds.
Yeah, exactly.
Right. And that's his kingdom.
My boss chased me into the bathroom the other day.
I think my boss is going to like hurt me or rape me and everyone's just like get to fucking work.
Well, you know, you got to work.
That's the capitalism side of it all.
Which is going back to your old thing about this being like the true vampire.
Yeah, I think so.
That's exactly what what he says.
What Joe says.
Tucker Joe, you got to work.
It all comes together.
Truly. I thought the opening scene was really.
We're now bootstraps podcast.
Grab them. Let's go.
But I really liked the opening scene that the first visual that you get is of a long canyon of New York City streets.
And all of the brake lights are on and all the lights are red.
And so you're seeing like the red arterial veins of the city and they've got the blood in them.
I thought that was really deft and comparing that to the heavy handedness of between worlds.
It's like they just show it to you for a second and then they're like into the story.
And there's so much of that.
Like, yeah, even just missing that point that he never really does get bit.
Like there's there's just so much to sort through in this film.
Because I think we only see his neck one time as big.
And that's when he imagines Rachel is going to bite him.
Yeah. When he takes it off her Rachel to bite him again.
One point, I thought the bandage changed sides.
Well, there's a lot of mirrors. There's a lot of mirrors.
He's like and to the mirror stuff, he starts not being able to see his own reflection that we can.
And that's right. An issue. Where am I?
Where am I? You're in the bathroom.
Trying to take a dump.
This movie at the hour mark gets to be one of his best movies ever.
The movie is good from the opening shot.
What Gary's talking about with those establishing shots in the beginning.
I loved the score of this movie.
The score of this was so well done.
Truly. But then when you add that to these opening shots,
like it's all like dawn or dusk.
There's a tension built into the way it's shot that I think really carries into the movie.
And it adds a lot of uneasiness.
I mean, certainly on a subsequent watching, you can look out for all these little things.
But my initial journey through this film was there is not a through line here
until there is and it's a hard shift, but it's so good.
When was that moment for you?
It's at the very specific line.
Tell him I'm in a meeting.
Well, what if I'm in a meeting?
No, it's when Alba finally finds the contract.
She comes into his office and he loses it.
Like Rachel's sucking on his neck and he opens the door.
She's like, I found it. He's like, it's too late, Alpha.
But no, it's not too late.
Too late, too late.
He starts chasing her down the stairs through the building, like in the sub basement.
It is such a good American Psycho chase.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot of parallels to be drawn from that.
But he chases her down in the basement.
She has a gun.
It's got blanks in it that she got from her brother and he's confronting her there.
And at this point, he's just like he's convinced he's a vampire.
He can't see his reflection anymore.
And he's telling her to shoot him and she keeps shooting him on the floor
because she can't shoot him.
It's like, no, shoot me, shoot me.
And he attacks her and there's a sexual assault.
I mean, the ultimate vampiric act.
And then they read it large.
Usually it's just alluded to the sucking on the neck is alluding to rape.
It's alluding to sexual assault and Peter Lowe does it all to your point.
And it's like he's a vampire as just a regular ass dude.
So like, you know, that's when the whole plot with him losing his mind
and the whole out him just being a dick.
All about all things like kind of coalesce and goes directly into him
running down the street going, I'm a vampire.
I'm a vampire. I'm a vampire.
And that's when the movie clicked for me because I'm like, I grew up in a big city.
Like, I've definitely seen someone running down the street,
street screaming something that insane took you that long to get into that.
They did. I mean, that's OK.
I mean, as I'm just watching the first hour of the film, like,
what is this movie trying to be?
And it wasn't until then that I realized, oh, this is a dissection of how capitalism,
the big city and just all that weighing pressure leads to a mental breakdown.
Wants to be seen as this big executive.
He has a shitty apartment.
That was one thing I noticed about everything he presents himself as.
And then like from the very beginning, you see how terrible his apartment is.
Like he's got a really small, really narrow kitchen.
He with gross ass stove roaches.
Speaking of the kitchen, when he comes out of it with the coffee,
he hums a Stravinsky tune, correct, Roxanne?
And isn't that when Nick Cage cost the film like ten thousand dollars?
Correct. Yeah.
Oh, my God. I did not.
I ran out of money by the end of the film.
That's amazing.
Well, let's talk about some PETA stuff now, then, right?
Oh, yeah, he got in trouble for the.
Let's talk about that. He ate a bug. He ate a roach.
Water bug. Water bug.
But yes, he ate two.
He actually takes some of the panache out of it
because a cockroach would be way gross.
No, no. Water bugs are bigger.
Yeah. But the cockroach has the meaty insides.
Water bugs. They're they're spongy.
They're just made of water. I've eaten both. Trust me.
Either way, this was water bugs.
If you're watching your calories.
Exactly. The caloric density.
Yeah. This wasn't in the script.
He thought this would be a good thing because it harkened back to Dracula.
And he's like, oh, this is what, you know, someone would do.
So it was his idea. He immediately regretted it.
And what I read is they took three takes to get it done.
And he said everything inside of him was telling him not to do it as he was doing.
You could tell, like in his face when he's chewing it,
because they give you such a direct shot.
It's like he's counting dollar bills.
As if he like chooses, oh, OK, they're going to seven, eight, ten million dollars.
There's no way he made $10 million for this.
No, but in his own head, he probably could have hoped for that.
That said, from what I read, it seemed like he really, really wanted this part
and really, really loved this part and really, really loves this part.
He said as recently as a few years ago that this was his favorite movie.
Yeah, 2018. He said this was his favorite performance.
While he was shooting between, no, while Between Worlds was out.
He was digging this one.
This was like a GQ interview.
When he smashes up his apartment, that was all done in one shot
because it was all like real furniture.
None of it was stage furniture.
Yeah, there's a lot of cameras and let him go to town.
I always get excited at a good smash.
Yeah, because I want to do that someday.
I want to just like be able to go into a room and be like,
I'm going to destroy everything and I'm going to destroy that in the weirdest way.
Does that not exist?
Like, what's with this escape room bullshit?
I don't need a problem.
I want something to destroy.
There are smash rooms.
There are smash. Oh, good.
I'm glad this problem has been solved.
Going back to him being a non-union trucker in the first film,
this was a non-union film.
That opening scene where he's trying to hail a cab with his date.
Apparently, they had to re-film that scene a lot because they were
union film workers with bullhorns and like airhorns just ruining the shot.
That's really apropos too, because it's almost a film commenting on itself.
This whole piece about capitalism.
Yeah, and then being a non-union crew or production.
Totally. So they could push all their workers to the brink.
And if they're going to exploit the imagery of truckers in the movie as they do,
then it's the least they could do to acknowledge the fact that the full history
of union busting within the trucking industry is a really devastating one
and one that has meant that truckers can know most truckers no longer
are able to make a living and support a family the way they were used to be.
Eat shit, Bezos.
That's right.
And truck driver used to be at least in this the Northwest,
one of the most prolific jobs.
Like there were more truck drivers in the state of Oregon than any other job.
Now let's talk about yogurt.
Fuck you, Nick. I'm great at segues.
So who else is turned on by hot yogurt on the feet?
Who amongst us isn't?
So I like to have yogurt on the feet.
According to an associate producer and casting director,
Nick Cage requested hot yogurt be poured on his toes to get aroused
for the sex scene with Jennifer Beals.
Was it necessary for him to be aroused?
Yes, because he didn't like her.
Apparently he thought she was not interesting.
He hated that she was casted for the part.
Yeah, he wanted his girlfriend, Patricia Arquette, to be the role.
Interesting.
OK, here's just the both of the women, Rachel and Jackie,
the two chicks that he like picks up at bars, both African-American.
Nick, I think that plays into the broader commentary that's happening.
Yes, it could be part of a bigger theme.
Absolutely, because Alva is also a person of color.
So he's expressing all of this libidinal energy, all of this like really intense exchange.
Well, all of this predatory nature and stuff, like even just picking up chicks.
Except for the one the woman he kills,
the woman who's painted as the sort of true victim, as a white woman, blonde woman.
Yeah, the prize. The damsel in distress is the white woman.
Well, she's the classic, like, victim.
Right, exactly.
But these other women who play these more sort of complicated roles and.
They're prey, they're not victims.
We should feel sad for the unsuspecting victim.
But like Alva is, you know, she should quit.
Right.
All of us would be remiss if we didn't just briefly point out the whole
theory that Nic Cage is actually a vampire because of that photo from the 1800s.
I don't know about it.
Have you not heard this?
No.
Go on.
It's the same thing with like Hiao Kian who's like a Highlander.
They both have serious Dorian Gray shit.
Yeah, no, there's a photo.
Someone found a photo in like 2011 from the 1800s that looks shockingly similar to Nicolas Cage.
I mean, I feel like we're all just on repeat at some point.
Take a picture and we put it up in the future.
There's going to be another guy that looks like it.
I mean, there's more of a stalker who has a whole thing about like repeating faces.
I'm just a skipping record.
Like literally every five years, I find somebody who looks exactly like me.
I want that photo montage.
The only other fun fact I have about this film is apparently at one point Travolta and
Stallone were considered for those roles.
And Dennis Quaid was cast in it, actually.
I missed that.
Before there was a whole drama about casting.
Right.
Yeah, because Cage had wanted it and then backed out and then it was Quaid and then
Cage really wanted it back.
Wow, that's wild.
That almost makes me think like all of the epic and really like artful storytelling that
I'm projecting onto this film is totally accidental.
Like if they were really thinking of Travolta and Stallone for this, they must not have
been trying to do something very highbrow.
And I'm over here with my pinky in the air about this film.
This is 100% Cage.
Like Cage brought the gravitas to this film.
For me, there was such a weird experience watching this breakdown that Peter Lowe goes
through because the second time I watched the movie, I started to feel some empathy.
But I really, it was really hard for me to get to feeling actually any sort of compassion
for this person.
I think the reason for that was because you're not only watching a mental breakdown, which
is something that is this painful experience of suffering and that's very worthy of compassion,
but you're also watching him do it in a very particular context of corporate, patriarchal,
white supremacist America, where as he is spiraling out and starting to behave more
and more aggressively, violently in public, the people around him don't give a shit because
his behaviors are so normalized.
Right, like the boardroom.
Oh, that scene was chilling.
She asked for a raise after you assaulted her.
What a crazy bitch.
Take it out of Attila's paycheck.
Fuck you.
Well, to that point, also at the end of the film, when he's fully gone, he hallucinates
being in the therapist's office saying this whole time he's just looking for love.
So the imaginary therapist sets him up with one of her patients and they're perfect for
each other for 10 minutes.
And then he goes, he just and as he's about to leave the imaginary therapist office, like,
oh, by the way, I sexually assaulted a woman.
She's like, totally fine.
Just a little in release.
And I did.
That's right.
People are murdered in New York every day.
But I killed him.
I was like, no one's even called the police yet.
What are you worried about?
And he completely just disassociates from everything he does, imagines the person who's in charge
of his mental health telling him it's all fine.
Yeah, it's quite prescient of Trump in a way.
This whole like, that's right.
You just break the law in public and you you brag about it.
And then everyone's like, oh, no big deal.
It's just a little bit of treason with the Russians.
Right.
One thing that really stood out to me and I really appreciated from kind of a filmmaking
perspective is just how much this like cribs and tributes like classic monster movies.
This is one of the most like quotable and memeable Nick Cage movies of all time, like
any other like crazy faces.
It's either from this or from Wicker Man or Face Off.
So much of that is sort of inspired by like old dark German style.
Oh, yeah.
Like everything has to be these exaggerated monster moves and claws creeping across a
bed.
All that kind of stuff.
Bulging eyes.
When he was at the club, it was just straight Nosferatu movements and like bodies.
Osture.
So I watched this great interview with Nicolas Cage talking about just this because he grew
up and loved silent films.
And this was a large experiment.
And he's like, how can I be a silent film monster in a modern film?
Like how can I bring that physical acting to cinema now?
When he's dragging the piece of the palette through the street and he just screams out
loud, that was my quote to be this point.
This is a very quotable movie.
So why don't we just round robin this and just until we run out, I can't say it with
the right intonation, but I just love the part where he literally says boo.
Yeah, that's so ridiculous.
So it's after he has assaulted Alva and then has shot himself in the head with her gun
that shoots blanks and then he just.
He recites the alphabet.
Brilliant.
So there's a another Nick Cage podcast with this guy who's the host, Nick Darrell Edge,
and he's actually going to be a guest on our show in July.
And his intro uses the alphabet to spell out cage rage, which is the definition.
I'll just jump in with another one.
I never miss anything.
Not once, not one time.
With tons of gestures to his body work in this is incredible.
I like how he's patching up his patch.
I was in mortal combat with a fucking bat.
Give me a break.
That's a good one.
One that it was I think when he was in therapy, he says, we're on the bed and suddenly this
bat swoops down out of nowhere.
And she says, a bat?
And he goes, holy shit.
I can't remember where this one's from, but I just loved it.
Yeah, well, fuck you too, sister.
It was also with the therapist.
And he says, she's asking me about something.
However, he was dealing with something in the night and he goes, oh, yes, OK, I know.
I guess I was pretty horny, pretty, pretty keyed up from being with the girl the night
before.
I was drunk too.
That was it.
I had a little to drink.
I was a little drunk.
Plus, I was horny.
And point of order, she's an analyst.
A of all.
B of all, she's a cougar, right?
She was looking up at the high.
That's right.
We saw him.
And C of all.
She was also fucking thirsty as shit.
He mentioned getting like turned on by the bat.
He's like, let's circle back to that.
And C of all, she's a cougar.
She's a cougar.
introduced through their mutual analytics.
Oh, that is problematic.
Oh, but to be fair, she didn't.
It was all in his head.
I do love when he's gone full vampire,
and he's running around the city asking people to stake him.
And he's yelling he's a vampire,
and people going into church on Sunday morning.
And the bells are going off, and he goes,
Christ! The torches of the dam!
Wait, I got one more that we can do.
It's when he's, like Peter alluded to earlier,
he's in this perfect relationship with a maddening woman for 10 minutes,
and he gets home, and he's like,
Oh, he's just saying,
Why did you become a vampire? Why can't you be normal?
Does this mean we can't have kids?
Okay, so my favorite quote, just a little context.
Nick Cage is berating Alma for not having found this contract.
He calls out to one of the other secretaries to see what Alma's up to.
The secretary's like,
Oh, she's just getting ready to go.
And he's like, Oh, well, send her in.
So he has her come in, and he's all like,
Oh, blah, blah, blah.
They talk for a second.
It's like, Oh, why do you have your coat on?
And she's like, Oh, I was about to leave.
So Peter just says,
Oh, there is no one else in this entire office that I could possibly ask to share such a horrible job.
You're the lowest on the totem pole here, Alma.
The lowest.
Do you realize that every other secretary who's been here has been here longer than you,
Alma.
Everyone.
And even if there was someone here who had been here just one day longer than you,
I still wouldn't ask that person to partake in such a miserable job.
as long as you were around. That's right Alva, it's a horrible horrible job
sifting through old contract after old contract. I couldn't think of a more
horrible job if I wanted to and you have to do it. You have to or I'll fire you. Do
you understand? Do you? Good. Then there's no problem then. Is there? And it's like I
fucking love that little monologue which is like I've had terrible bosses, I've
had terrible jobs, and I've had people try to fucking strong-arm me in said job
with shit like that. And it's like God and it's just insane the way he straight
up says to her face I'm making your life miserable only because I can. Yeah.
That was the hottest part of the film. It was really good. Those white eyes. I don't want to throw shade at
publishers because I'm sure they do something. I'm sure Peter Lowe's the job
that he has. I'm sure that person does something. So I almost feel like that role
that he's playing is also vampiric. Oh absolutely. You publish somebody else's
work, you take credit for it, you suck the lifeblood out of it. Like what the fuck
does a publisher even do? No offense publishers. No for real though. What's
ironic though because you read the the Ringer article as well is that one of
the producers of this because this movie was so weirdly panned none of them could
get work after it and she ended up starting her own publishing house. That's
right. Yeah the X of the screen right here. Interesting. So this got negative
feedback huh? Oh yeah this was this was not a movie that was well received. It
actually like really fucked up the director's career, the producers that
were involved. The only one who kind of came away unscathed was Nick Cage because
his performance was so unusual. But then it really got like a cult following and
that's when it really kind of got new life. But it didn't it didn't make any
money, it didn't really impact anybody in a positive way in terms of reviews. It
was sort of a dead movie. Yeah 88 wasn't the time for a myth like this. I feel
like 88 was such a time of optimism in US America and that level of like real
like deep self-inquiry was just like taboo you know it's like we are doing it.
This is the shit like everything about this is awesome. On the spectrum, good Cage,
bad movie, bad Cage, good movie, good Cage, good movie. I mean in my opinion good Cage,
good movie. I mean it's fucking wacky performance. Yes. I mean it's absolutely insane. Can we talk for just a
minute about the scene where he gets his teeth? When you say like you had a hard
time feeling bad for him, this is the scene where I really felt bad for him. Yes that's exactly what I was gonna say. This is the part
where like I felt my heart open to Peter Lowe because he walks into some kind of
esoteric shop and he does not. Standard corner occult store. Yep. And he asks the shopkeeper for teeth, he sees some nice teeth that are kind of
realistic and he cannot afford them. He no longer has the cash in his wallet.
They're $20. But he can't afford these teeth and so he has to buy the cheapies. Which he keeps putting it in like in different directions because sometimes like the underbite, overbite change in every scene.
Didn't notice that part. But you know the poor guy sits on a park bench and rips into this package. But then like my empathy disappears because he puts them in and kind of like counts real quick and then he crawls away from the bench.
He's a cat. He's a sexy cat. But with those teeth in, he does tally one kill which I'm with you, I don't think that he becomes a vampire but that does problematize a little bit that he's able to bite someone with that.
He doesn't with the teeth though because you see right after he kills her. Does he take them out? Well you don't see him take them out. But after you see him kill her, like he turns around and just pops them back in.
He does have a kill with the teeth.
Which also, are pigeons that easy to catch? Holy fuck!
Okay, there's a story behind this. The pigeon he did grab was droved but he wasn't told that they'd drug a pigeon. They just told him to grab and catch a pigeon. But they drugged one to make it so he would catch one eventually.
So he would believe it. Oh, that's brilliant.
Y'all want to drug some pigeons?
Let's talk a little bit about how he gets himself killed.
Yes.
What did y'all make of that scene?
Well I was just, I was excited for a good old fashioned tire ironing.
So yeah, Alva tells her brother what happened so her brother breaks into Peter's home and is going to tire iron him to death and Peter's there with that hunk of wood he kicked out from a pallet earlier.
And as soon as the daylight's on he puts the piece of wood to his chest and the brother's like, alright, shove.
Yeah, well he's been asking people to stake him for like the last like one or so scenes for him. It would have been sad if they didn't.
And, you know, they went right for it. The pallet wood is oriented the wrong direction to go through his ribs.
Yeah.
But I still enjoyed it. I think it was the appropriate death for him.
This is going back a little bit to, I guess it relates to what some of you were talking about earlier with the opening shots of New York City skyline and just really love the way that they use the city as a backdrop throughout the whole movie, and there's so many
interesting moments, I guess, both outside in the city, on the streets, and also inside. I thought they just did a really good job of creating this environment that, like the music it creates this feeling of dread and doom which really counters the
sense of absurdity and comedy that's also happening and it makes it very, I think the first time I watched it. Yeah, I got this feeling I was just totally confused what like what the hell is this second time around though, I really, whether or not it was intentional
I thought that it had a great effect that juxtaposition just made me think about vampires as extensions of their environment, like all monsters are kind of representative of some larger background I guess and, you know, like zombies sort of belong in this post apocalyptic
setting. Vampires are creatures of the night, and this embodied being that represents something in the beer of shadow and of the things that are in the shadows in a society and in culture so things like lust and violence and all this stuff that gets to be written off
when it's performed by white guys. The original vampire story like Dracula is about aristocrats literally eating the poor, it was literature for a lower class to comment on and point out the problem in their society of the rich flight guy literally eating them.
You know I think to that point about the things that live in the shadows. The fact that the subway really doesn't play a big part in this film, I think is really like, again, a very subtle move that you would think that if you're going to shoot a vampire movie and it's
going to be set in New York City that vampires going to make some hay in the subway like that's where you go to do your thing you know what I mean you're in the dark and the shadows you can sneak up on people you can get away quickly, but the only time we see the subway
make an appearance is when Alva gives an arm to the homeless man who's singing Beautiful Dreamer. And so there is kind of this commentary about the goodness of the poor and the working class who actually are forced to live in the shadows in the society while
meanwhile I think that that is actually happening while Peter Lowe is going apeshit on his apartment. All of these levels are happening at once which is why the film is so interesting to me but you know you can read into it all these different social
commentaries cultural commentaries and at the same time the screenwriter who wrote this thing. He was in a terrible relationship with one of the producers actually who encouraged him to write the script as a way to like get him out of the house I think, but he, yeah he was
in such shape and that's real you know and no matter who you are and no matter your, your power and privilege in society of course people still feel pain and suffering and so that's a part of it to is like this story of feeling, you know like you're in a shitty
relationship and you're feeling isolated and you're longing for things that you don't have and yeah it's all it's all happening at once. So it's a confusing mess, but it's also kind of awesome.
I'm going to pitch it to you guys first, your vote actually doesn't count. But what between these two movies would you pick to continue on?
This is why I asked you the question earlier about best and cagiest are the same thing I would say between worlds is so cagy, but the vampire's kiss to me just as a work of art as a film, absolutely the best of the two.
The vampire's kiss or the win. I think even the most absurd parts of between worlds can't compare to the bulging eyes and alphabet reciting antics of Nicolas Cage in this movie.
Well that's unfortunate Nick and I discussed this earlier.
We specifically decided because we know how much Peter hated it that we were going to hear the fucking monster.
Look at that. You are the vampire.
It's clearly vampire's kiss. Yeah, vampire's kiss was incredible. It's such a good movie and like I said I had a hard time getting into it but once I realized what I was actually seeing and went back and rewatched it completely sold an amazing film.
I just want to take a step back here and say I cannot fucking wait for Renfield watching him continue this role playing straight up fucking Dracula is going to be incredible.
This movie looks so good.
So this is Cage adjacent. The sequel to Left Behind, Rise of the Antichrist is coming out starring Kevin Sorbo and in a recent interview Kevin Sorbo was, I'm not going to do the quote right so please forgive me because I didn't want Google to
have me think I was Googling Kevin Sorbo Christian quotes, but he said something along the lines of, you know, the first one came out, and it did really well, but all my fan, but everyone was just like, why isn't Kevin Sorbo the lead in this film why is it Nick Cage, everyone wanted me to do it.
So I, Kevin Sorbo, who will undoubtedly one day be found in a truck stop bathroom sucking Dean Cain's dick, allegedly, should have been in this film the whole time.
Direct quote. I don't think there's anything missed.
Yeah, that was my in this week and Kevin Sorbo thinks is a better actor than Nick Cage.
So yeah, thank you guys for being here. It was a you elevated this podcast a little bit more than we're probably used to. And that's appreciated.
If we can we'll link this podcast to an online thesaurus just for our listeners.
Yeah, now that we're an educated podcast people exactly. I just want to give a quick shout out to the the ringer article, I got a lot of my information from the article called truly batshit the secret history of vampires kiss the craziest Nicholas Cage movie of all time
by Zach Schoenfeld highly recommend it for a read it was really well done, really, really fascinating.
So a couple shout outs, we got into the criteria on channel during the lockdown, and that's how we found vampires kiss and that's how most of the films that populate our imaginations, we find them on there.
Really fantastically curated so big ups to the people who sort and organize the way they organize the films is just so nice. And then also wanted to shout out bell hooks, the will to change.
Oh, hell yeah.
Both movies can be viewed at my house.
Movies are available on to be if you're okay with watching commercials, or you can go to Nick's house, really sweet garage we can watch them in.
But yeah so please rate review subscribe all the regular things on all the podcast platforms find us on Reddit, it does help us out, we were the number 138 movie review podcasts this week.
If you are interested in supporting us on Patreon you can find us at patreon.com slash cage match, we're on Reddit, if you want to interact with us at all. It's cage match pod.
And as always thank you to our sparkle buddies, Josh, Sean, Josie Rico Matt and Adam, and our inner cage member, Ira and special thanks to our new inner cage member, john, so thank you guys for making this shit happen.
Also, Nick, the comments are on Reddit apparently.
We established that last time when I said to comment on Reddit. I couldn't remember anything last week I could barely speak, you're the brains, I have the brains.
Peter a I'd my entire persona persona into that podcast.
chat GPT just for Sean.
I don't know why you guys don't call it the premium tier cage dancers.
Fuck.
Now we're going to.
Go to the house.
Just in general, if you want to give a little test.
You sound just like her it's crazy. I know.
It's fooled Gary many a time.
I thought I was supposed to wait for a poignant moment like after I say pounding on the beat.
I thought you were cleansing the space.
That was the point. No, I'm just dumb.