Oh god. Oh my god.
I want to hear everything, too.
Technically, you could turn it up at this point.
I could, but then, you know.
What are we paying you for? Yeah, that's true.
Hand jobs. I pay you in compliments.
No, you don't. I said you did a great.
You do a great job. You did.
Thank you. I feel good now.
Oh, man.
You guys ever see that video of the orangutan on the runaway segue?
Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the monkey that has sex with a frog
until it dies.
I mean, you're just funnier.
Oh, you haven't seen that.
Yeah. Oh, man. I think into a love love.
Yeah, it was at the zoo.
He just like grabs it and like
until the frog does or the monkey dies.
The frog. Oh, I thought the monkey died.
No, he's funnier if the monkey throws it to death and like right
in front of a bunch of kids and stuff.
Oh, man.
Well, there goes my segue joke.
Anyway, welcome back to Cage Match colon, a roundabout way of meeting Nicholas Cage.
I'm your host, Sean, here with avid monkey lover.
I'm Nick. And I love monkeys.
And our producer.
Peter, I don't love anything right now.
You let us into your house, Peter.
That's true. You kind of asked for this.
I did. Yes. So this is Cage Match.
It's 64 Nick Cage movies going head to head bracket style.
We sort of seeded them and put them in different categories of funny,
serious, fucking weird action.
Yeah. Tough guy. That's okay.
We kind of got two tough guys this week.
Hey, thanks for noticing.
I've been working out a little more.
Hey, hi, yo.
No, this is actually the funny bracket.
Yeah. Oh, God.
Really?
How do you think it was the tough guy bracket?
I just rewatched The Trust and it is not funny.
Oh, it's hilarious.
It has its moments.
At least two thirds of it is hilarious.
Yeah. And there's sprinklings of great even after that.
Well, go on.
Why don't we just get right into it then?
The Trust starring Nicholas Cage and Elijah Wood.
Banger of it.
What was your favorite Elijah Wood movie?
Currently, The Trust.
It's up there. It really is.
I mean, I love Elijah Wood.
I always have. He's always got a lot of stuff.
He gives a great performance in everything.
Yeah, like I think I'm maybe one of the only people in the world
that liked North, but that really stood out to me.
And this is all like the biography of Kanye's kid, right?
Correct. Yeah.
Kanye's kid is Elijah Wood.
He plays Northwest.
Correct. OK.
So The Trust and Nicholas Cage and Elijah Wood play two evidence room
cops working in Las Vegas, going nowhere fast.
Elijah Wood's life sucks.
So does Nicholas Cage.
Nick Cage's level with his dad played by Jerry Lewis, of all people.
Yeah. Who would have guessed he was still doing things?
Well, he wasn't after this movie because then he died.
Yeah. I mean, I thought he was dead before this.
Yeah. Peter and I had talked about that.
We're like, did you know Jerry Lewis was alive in 2016?
Well, I mean, I read that they like had to have him.
It's got to be Jerry Lewis.
Why? He doesn't do fucking anything.
OK. Yeah. And we're friends.
And apparently, Nick Cage just wanted to be in a movie with him.
So asked him to.
Nicholas Cage plays Jim Stone and Elijah Wood plays Waters.
He has a first name, too, but it's David.
Oh, David. It's Elijah Waters.
Elijah Waters.
They know each other better than Elijah Woods.
I'm a pro. There's also Elijah Wind.
Elijah Hart.
Oh, you beat me to it.
By your powers combined, I am a decent character actor.
Yeah. Have you watched his episode of Hot Ones?
It's really good.
I mean, I like Hot Ones.
Yeah. Easy show to watch.
It's interesting because he really speaks with reverence
about Nick Cage and that performance and what he brings to the table.
And I feel like that's pretty consistent narrative across the board.
Yeah. Well, what I saw, I was only able to find one interview about this film,
and it was just Elijah Wood and the director.
And Elijah Wood was just talking about how he'd always wanted to work with the cage
and how, you know, consummate, professional and great
and brought a lot of energy to the performance.
Fun fact, they had two days to read and rehearse the script before filming started.
Well, he nailed it then, because Nick Cage's character
I thought was very well performed.
I thought both of them were great.
Well, yes. But we're here to talk about Nick.
Yeah. For a 2016 film starring Nicholas Cage,
the production values on this were good.
His mustaches were great.
The mustache was great.
His acting was peak good.
Cage overall, really good cage.
I was a little disappointed that Ethan Suppley didn't have a mustache, too.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Ethan Suppley.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, the film revolves around these two discovering a drug dealer
has a safe at the back of a convenience store, and they decide to rob it
for no particular reason other than their lives aren't great.
And why not?
They're just shitty cops.
But to be fair, all the cops in this movie are shitty.
I feel like we watched movies at very different energy levels on this one.
I'll get you to the same point.
Spin this for me.
OK, so we've got two evidence cops
not not living their best lives.
Elijah Wood, we start out the movie with him
just banging a prostitute and sex worker.
Thank you lifelessly staring at the mole underneath her mammary gland.
Is that how we're doing it now?
I like that you covered that one left it.
Yes, sir. Left it and
smoking a joint jumping out.
And that's when we find out, like as he's getting dressed, that he's a cop
and Nicholas Gage, he's on scene.
And there's like there's like a body and everybody's like, you know,
walking around picking up the evidence and then out of the closet.
But this other guy who's just knocking people down
and Elijah Woods all stoned and he's just laughing on the ground
as everybody goes chasing this dude.
The one guy gets punched in the balls.
Yeah, Bert, Bert, Bert, Bert.
You all right, Bert? Fuck you.
So that's how we get introduced to him.
Nicholas Cage's character is like petitioning to get all this new
like evidence technology stuff.
And the captain and the commander are just like passing him back and forth
basically, just like neither of them wanting to do anything about it.
But then like the the captain sends him down to the police auction
to like secure a tractor for his son in law
because he just doesn't want to hit the auction.
It's like this movie's fucking hit the whole cylinder.
It's great. I was just trying to get the overall plot out of the overall plot.
So we can fucking cares about that.
Discuss the finer points of this film,
like how to hide drugs in an engine block.
Fine summaries. Nicholas Cage is dealing with this thing with engine block guy.
And they find all this cocaine and Nicholas Cage takes a look at the paperwork
that came in with this car that had all the cocaine in it.
Got all the cocaine hidden in it and sees like this guy who had the car
he had posted bail and it was like two hundred thousand dollars
and it was posted in cash and he's like, well, that seems suspicious.
So he looks into it more and gets Elijah Wood involved.
And they start like tailing this drug dealer because he's out on bail
and they see that he's got a job and at this hotel,
Nicholas, you know, plays Elijah Woods boss and probably best only friend.
Yeah, I think it's about like that.
They seem to only have each other.
They decided to make cage does a sweet montage
where he gets an undercover job at the casino.
And there's just like shots of him like making friends with everybody
and dancing in the break room and like carrying
platters of like cheeseburgers and like turning corners
and like tipping it all over the place and having like the whoa
inside of himself.
Oh, so then they find out that like there's these shipments
leaving the casino and nobody would let him like near it
because it was, you know, involving the drug dealer guy.
And so Nick Cage follows this van one night
and sees where it's going with this delivery.
And then he calls up Elijah Wood and.
All right, this is when he shows him the Polaroids. Yeah.
And so they go and they're just out back of this convenience store
and he's showing them around and there's these pictures and Elijah Woods.
Like these pictures are terrible.
Would you have like a homeless guy take him and hit cages?
Just like, well, I wasn't going to do it.
I paid him a little. Yeah.
Just all right. All right.
They just the mental justification that you see in their eyes.
It's like, well, he was paid, so it's probably fine.
And that's when they find out that there's this vault, a creepy locked up.
They find the locked up
chair lock and freezer.
Yeah. And there was something else they see, and I couldn't quite make it out
in the photo, but it was a penis.
That was a penis. Yeah.
Yeah. Did you wait? Did you not get that?
I did not see that. Oh, no.
The homeless guy took a picture down his pants.
Oh, no. And it was just homeless. That's amazing.
Yeah. That's why Nick Cage was like, you found it.
That's pretty good.
I mean, Nick Cage is Nick Cage's sense of humor in this is so good.
He's he's got like such dad jokes.
Oh, man. He's just always pulling little pranks on Elijah Wood.
Well, OK, so let's get into that a little bit,
because one of my favorite lines in this is what it's Elijah Wood quote,
but they're at the strip club where they're first starting to like
brainstorm the heist and they're sitting down
and they're looking down this bar and Elijah Wood just goes.
I think that guy's getting a hand job, but he's still eating.
So it's hard to tell.
Yeah. I love what he sat down in this strip club.
And he's just looking around.
He's like, where did you bring me?
And Nick Cage is just drinking coffee and can't get a refill.
Classic. There is a lot about this movie.
I really do enjoy mostly involving the two of them.
They have great chemistry and a lot of fun playing off each other
for the heist when they find that there's a safe there.
They have to get, you know, the diamond tipped drill bit to drill
through what 12 inches of concrete.
It was three feet or something like that.
And then 12 inches is nothing.
I could drill through 12 inches of concrete.
It was also steel that they had to drill through.
Well, concrete and steel, wasn't it?
Yeah, but concrete doesn't concrete. Nothing.
I don't work in the trades.
Crime. Yes.
Crime trades.
So when he has to call Cologne, Germany to like place this order
and the two Germans are on the other end of the phone and Nick Cage,
you know, goes from German to yeah, I'll have my people call you.
When someone walks into his office, one of the Germans turns the other
and says, you know, he's acting weird.
Maybe he's a bank robber.
The first guy goes, so cool. Yeah.
Yeah, I like those Germans. Yeah.
Yeah, those were good Germans.
The first half, you know, the first act of this film has its
has its wackiness and as they set up for the caper.
And that quickly goes away when Nick Cage just murders a guy.
Yeah, there's like this weird sub level of Cage's character.
So like just dark and determined in this going out
and just telling jokes with the gun dealer, like as he's picking up guns
for their little heist and then he's just like intentionally antagonizing
this guy just to like drive his attention like away from Cage
while Cage like discreetly loads a gun and shoots the gun dealer
like right there and just leaves him and it's like wild.
One thing I do want to talk about this film first time feature film directors
back there only film to date.
They have another movie coming out next year with Nicolas Cage.
The attention to like detail in this film, the show don't tell of their storytelling.
As you were saying, when he kills the guy, he's trying to distract him
with buffoonery and is wearing glasses for the first time.
He takes out his like glasses, casing glasses, and that's where he's hidden
the bullets to just shoot the guy in the head.
Also, how he finds out about Bobo, the gun dealer, because they work in evidence.
So he just went and found a gun in evidence,
tracked down the case file and found who it was on and then reached out to that guy.
I know it feels like if you were a cop, you would have a ton of intel
to do like a good crime and and they did.
I mean, they had a ton of good intel to do a crime.
OK, actually, you know what? They did do a good crime.
They could have totally they were just bad at doing a good crime.
Well, Elijah Wood was bad at having a conscience.
Yeah, he or being too afraid. Exactly.
He was too afraid.
I mean, that Cage was fully willing to just kill another cop
would just happen to like come upon them.
That was a security guard cop is a little term.
That was a security guard. Yeah. All right.
Yeah. He's just always fucking with Elijah.
But I love it.
Like when he like plays like he didn't get the van for the heist.
Like I thought you were going to do it.
Oh, I'm sorry. Like, I don't know.
I guess I goofed up.
It's like I goofed up.
You realize we might get killed tomorrow, right?
Just throws the keys out there.
Yeah, they have terrific, terrific chemistry between the two.
It was just a joke, just a little pre-heist joke.
But I mean, ultimately, it's that always fucking with Elijah Wood
that becomes Nick Cage's downfall.
The way they're going to break in is through the apartment above the safe.
Mm hmm. So they have to like take out the guy who lives there.
But turns out he had a lady friend over.
That guy gets killed and the lady friend is now hostage.
So now they have this hostage who gets three lines of dialogue.
Three lines of dialogue besides Snivellane.
Yeah, her character name is just woman.
Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, she's only there to be a plot device.
They eventually start drilling.
Security guard shows up.
Elijah Wood talks him down. Nick Cage almost shoots him.
They get into the safe.
Discreetly. Almost almost shoots him.
Discreetly through the window, through the blinds, just sort of split.
One of the later little comedy scenes is the belt on the press breaks.
So they have to like so Nick Cage makes a little incendiary device
to like put in the hole to like blow out the last like half an inch.
And there Elijah was just throwing mattresses
and whatever he can over the windows, then goes outside to have a smoke
and sees like what happens from the street and just just big flash of light.
Smoke alarms are going off.
Alarms going off.
But in premise, that would work. Yeah, it does.
Yeah. Well, it does, because it's a movie.
But the science behind it works, because it's the same as like
how you would build like a flash pot or a concussion pot.
Peter, call the Mythbusters, get them in on this.
I feel like they don't do as many crimes as we want them to.
They should have done crimes.
They've been great at crime.
Fuck. Can you imagine how much stuff they would have gotten away with?
And they're just like, now this is for a show.
And like Jamie just hang glides away.
Oh, my God. Let's talk about this.
I love heists.
I thought we were going to talk about hang gliders.
Now we have to do that again. Thanks to you.
Yeah, it's going to be awesome.
But I love heists.
All things heists, even bad heists.
I love them. Heiser, great.
Cool crimes.
I enjoy cool crimes as well.
And not cool crimes.
Well, I'm on the fence about the not cool crimes.
Well, what would be a not cool crime?
Not reviewing this podcast.
Oh, yeah. That's a not cool crime.
You should all get out there on your podcast.
Reviewing this podcast, but not listening to it.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, whatever.
Yeah. So it's a it's a great old heist film.
Well, it's a heist film.
Yeah. When they finally get into the vault, it's not drugs or money
necessary, like to hear white room with little shelves full of diamonds.
Yeah, that's a pretty high tech vault.
Yeah, it was pretty wild.
But also like, OK, so here's a rub question.
If you have a vault that's that high tech,
can you really just see the backs of the tumblers?
Wouldn't that be something you would cover up inside the door or something?
Yeah, man. Yeah, I don't know.
That was weird.
It was strange because like when I was watching it originally,
I was like, yeah, they drilled in like to like the wall portion of it
so they could see the tumblers inside.
But they don't.
Yeah, because they obviously showed the hole in the ceiling.
Like, yeah, that would have been inches back from the door.
That would have made a million times more sense
if they had gotten into the door itself.
I saw behind the scene.
Yeah, I think you were intentionally supposed to go along for the ride with them.
That they're just bumbling idiots.
I think you fill that vault with water and you flood all the treasure up the hole.
Ooh, the dollar bills like float through that.
Yeah, definitely.
Inch wide hole.
Well, that's why you get like a plumbing snake and you just snake them all out.
This is smart.
Yeah. Then you back for our next podcast.
Nick and Sean steal a podcast.
The brilliant thing about this plan is the money is all pre laundered.
Oh, God, no one's going to listen to that.
So they have a witness.
They need to take her out.
This is when Elijah would start to get super cagey that and clearly
this isn't just a drug dealer.
These are people who will track them down and kill them.
I understand his fear and reticence, but they are so far past the veil with that.
Like there's a dead guy upstairs, a lot of guns in that apartment,
like in a hidden wall, and they were in the safe.
Even when Elijah would puts everything back into the safe,
he thinks he's just like no one's going to know he was there.
Yeah, like there's no way he put the diamonds back in the right spot.
Yeah, any of that.
There's a fucking hole in the ceiling.
There's a hole in the ceiling.
The leads to a bunch of dead folks.
The chain that had the refrigerator closed is also like cut.
Right. There's a dead guy upstairs.
Yeah, there's all sorts of reasons.
The upstairs is mildly blown up.
Yeah. When you guys were in college, did you did you live in the dorms?
Yeah. I think go to college all 30.
All right. That would have been sad.
Yeah, that would have been sad. Van Wilder said so.
Van Wilder to the rise of Taj said patching up holes in a dorm
is just like you put toothpaste in the hole and then kind of like smooch.
And that's it.
Yeah. So I think that's all they had to do is a little sweep,
a little toothpaste smudge. Good.
Well, that guy. Don't worry about it.
So they'll just put the rug back over the hole and.
It's perfect. Yeah.
Tape tape a rug to the ceiling.
That's that's clever, actually.
Never see it, especially if you just screw a bunch of furniture to the ceiling,
because then they'll like walk in and they'll be like, wow,
and then like have a panic attack and probably a heart attack.
And Elijah was trying to get the kids back out of this point.
Nick Cage is like, you know, it's you know, fine.
You know how much I believe in us.
You know, I bought us plane tickets to the Bahamas.
We're going to drink rum and smoke cigars tomorrow.
And then they have a bit of a shootout.
Nick Cage dies, which I thought was another freak out.
I thought it was too, based on how he was laying there.
Yeah. Just calmly with the gun and his hand resting on his chest.
I mean, I would have just shot him one more time just to be safe
because he does do a death fake out earlier just to spook Elijah Wood.
Yeah. And then goes to check his body.
And what does he find? Two plane tickets.
Peter and I mildly discussed this.
They kind of do this thing where Nick Cage may have known
that safe was like diamonds originally.
There's a lot of questions that this movie leaves you with.
Does it serve the movie at all that those questions are there
other than to just have them at odds?
So Nick Cage dies.
No, I don't think the movie is better for it.
I think having some answers as to like who
whose vault was this? You never know.
Yeah. It's not even the drug dealer's vault.
He wasn't personally driving stuff here.
Yeah. It was just getting shipped through the casino
in like a laundry service to the back of this bodega.
Yeah. My puzzling aspect of this is that I just couldn't figure out
when Cage really like knew more and withheld it.
Like, did he always know that this was going on?
Did he even need to do that?
Like casino fake out job or did he already fucking know?
And that was just performance for Elijah Wood.
Like who wasn't there anyway?
And he couldn't just said he was doing it.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's yeah.
When I again, rewatching it today, I was like, what is any of this?
So during the during the should have been ending in the beginning.
Classic move. Yeah. For us. Yeah.
Strike one. That's Tenet style.
During the heist, Elijah Wood feels bad for their hostage.
She's like, I have a son. Let me, you know, call his father.
And his perfect way of her not calling anyone for help was write the number
on my hand and I'll dial.
And then doesn't say anything to people.
Just puts the phone up to her ear and she just says, I need help.
And then at the end of the film, Elijah was like driving her out to the desert.
Some like cargo vans.
Yeah. Out of nowhere, too, because they do seem like very large establishing shots.
Yeah. And there's no other traffic anywhere.
Yeah. And they kind of surround him like, but then two vans.
They got two vans on one in the front, one in the back.
And then another guy like boxed him in on the side.
And Elijah would look at his hand, looks at the phone number on the back of the van.
It's like, who did you call?
Van door opens. Elijah would get shot in the head.
Yeah. But OK.
So the van is labeled M.D.B.
electricians, which literally just looks like mob.
It's like, oh, yeah.
OK, I guess that's supposed to be the fucking mob.
Elijah would slumps over car revs.
She, you know, gets her hands free and takes the mask off,
pushes him out of the way, jumps in the front.
Revealing that she is actually Nicholas Cage.
Yes, that would have been cool.
That would have been cooler.
She like just hits the brakes right before like careening into a semi truck.
And that's the end of the movie.
The character who didn't have a name and nobody cared about lived.
Yeah. Well, I mean, she obviously was just agent number two or whatever
from whoever the fuck owns that vault.
But we don't know who owns that vault.
So why do we care?
If we don't care now, we're not going to care later.
This whole thing felt to me like it deserved to be like a 12 part TV show.
Yeah, this would be a great like Amazon series.
Mm hmm. Their report is good.
Yeah. And I could see how that could really play out on TV.
But obviously, Cage doesn't do TV.
It's the the grind of working on an episodic series.
That's something that can be dragged out or like prolonged,
like numerous seasons, he doesn't like to be chained down.
That's right. He doesn't like to be caged.
Oh, God damn it.
This is our best episode yet.
I hate you guys less than I thought I would.
Hmm. Nick, do you have any quotes?
Yeah. So I've got two and they are kind of tied together.
The first one comes from when Nick Cage is like barging
into the casino to go talk to the drug dealer.
And Elijah Wood like stops him.
He's like, hey, man, you're dressed like a cop.
You can't do that. And Nick Cage is like, I am a cop.
And he's like, yeah, but you can't just do that right now.
And so Nick Cage just at one point turns and he's like, David, David,
stay positive, dude.
Oh, that's great.
But then at the end of the movie, when he's like getting Elijah Wood
kind of hyped up and stuff for the heist, he says to him,
you're a positive thinker.
I respect you and I dig you.
It's like, ah, he brings the positive thinking like all the way through the movie.
Yeah. Well, no, that line was from or he might have said it twice,
because mine was when they are walking through the taped out apartment
and Nicholas Cage. Oh, yes, that's what it was.
You're a positive thinker and I respect you.
And I fucking dig you.
Yeah, I really like in that scene.
There's one like wiggly line and the cage is like, what?
What's that over there?
And Elijah Wood goes, Oh, that's nothing.
A bee flew in my face when I was doing that part.
I mean, this movie is so ridiculous.
I don't remember where this quote actually came in,
because I didn't do a good job of my job.
And all I have is I have an idea.
It's kind of wacky.
That's when he makes a little like gunpowder.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
But yeah, when he just says it's a little bit wacky.
All in all, I enjoyed this film.
I did look up some reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to see what other people thought.
They enjoyed it a little less.
I want to share with you a couple of my favorites.
There are fetuses that would be more convincing in the role
of a jaded lawman than would.
You can festoon him with hookers and drug paraphernalia.
He still looks like a newly hatched baby bird.
Wood, a very long way removed from his Lord of the Rings glory days
is a womanizing, drug taking small timer,
essentially decent, but easily led astray by his friend.
They're on the road to nowhere.
And that's where this film is headed to.
Mean. Yeah.
Where do you guys put this on the Good Cage?
Good movie. Bad Cage.
I would say Good Cage. Good movie.
Yeah, I think that's fair.
I enjoyed the movie a lot.
Yeah. I don't think anybody put up a bad performance.
Now in the plot, while kind of wiggly at the end,
holds up pretty well.
Again, the director for, you know, good, great eye for detail.
So in the bracket methodology of this, the trust was a 14 seed.
So I want to ask you this kind of a long shot.
There's a reason that this is not rated super, super well.
I think I liked it better than a 14 seed.
But what were some of the other 14s we've seen?
And Cock Dangerous, the trust and coming up Zandily and Prisoners of the Ghostland.
Now, I'm really excited for Zandily or Zandali because Zendaya.
I'm not going to touch that right now,
because I'm going to talk about the medium sex scenes that are promised.
Yeah, I feel like we get some Judge Reinhold ass.
Yeah. So I think that's going to be sweet. Yeah.
So the unbearable weight of massive talent.
Mm hmm. That was a movie.
Starting a line right out of Sean's book.
I was a movie starring Nicholas Cage and you need a much longer pause
if you're being Sean.
Nicholas Cage plays Nick Kim Coppola.
Right. Or Nick and I.
C.K. and I.C.K. specifically specifically, which was the writers.
Things like, well, this is a fictional cage because he spells his name differently.
And this which is the best way to distinguish something
that you don't spell at all in the movie. Yeah.
This movie is essentially what would happen if we had a million dollars to blow.
The whole thing about Nicholas Cage showing up for a million dollars
might be true because in recent years, he's taken as low as one point five mil
for a video on demand film.
So, you know, his price is coming down.
What was the video on demand?
I mean, most of the things he's video on demand, I suppose, left behind
probably should have been.
No, that got theatrical release.
I know. But that's because of the Lord.
But I'm humanity. Oh, oh.
Again, in this house, we worship Thor.
Hail, mighty Thor. Not at your house, though.
Do you just choose what deities we can worship on our own homes?
Yes. My house.
All right. Who do we worship in your house?
Probably Thor. Yeah. Right.
Come gutters. That's God you want.
Yeah, I always.
That's why I love Catholic Jesus.
That's a that's a horny deity.
Fucking crucifixion, man, is a hell of a core workout.
Also, best friend sex worker.
True classic Jesus. Pretty fucking cool, dude.
All right. We need to get a million.
We need to get one point five million dollars.
Do the story of Jesus starting Nicholas Cage.
Oh, man. Redo the passion of the Christ.
Passion of the cage. Yeah.
So this movie Nicholas Cage,
bit of a slump in his career, gets offered a million dollars
to go visit some rich guy for his birthday party played by Pedro Pascal.
The guy is Cage's agent is Neil Patrick Harris.
Neil Patrick Harris in things is weird.
He spent so much of his career playing
Neil Patrick Harris as a character that I no longer see him in any role as an actor.
Yeah, it's kind of like when you hear a word so many times
and it just loses its meaning or like, oh, man, have you ever written a word?
Worker. No, but written a word or typed it out a bunch of times.
Yeah. Just ceases to be anything.
Well, for me, it's like if I do something in all caps,
if I look at a word in all caps, like it's like that can't possibly be the right word.
I remember way fucking back when I was in grade school
and we were learning basic programming and there's a function
that's just print and it will print a string onto the screen.
Look at you, Mr. Basic Programming in grade school.
Yeah. Well, I was pretty fancy looking at the word
print again and again and again.
It just it becomes like this cipher when you're like, what the fuck are these letters?
What is this thing?
My grade school was a wooden school
house across the street from a Holly farm that also had Guinea hens.
And sometimes the Guinea hens would get into the field at our school.
We had a bell tower and it was, of course, physically rung to end recess.
So like you could go in and like go ring the bell if you left recess early.
Was it like a privilege to go ring the bell?
Yeah. Yeah. Because usually only like one kid got to do it.
So like I would I would get in trouble because I would stack
like a bunch of desks and chairs and stuff in this back room.
And I'd climb up it and I'd get as high up on the rope as I could.
So that way they'd have trouble getting me off of it.
You do have a quasi moto vibe to you.
And I'm here for it.
Yeah. And I would just like hang from this rope and like swing
and they'd come in because there's just like they'd be like,
the bells are too loud.
You're annoying the neighbors.
There are no neighbors.
We're in the fucking woods.
This is weird.
Your guys's life experience.
I do not get because I went to school in the big city
and we had one ball and you tried not to get stabbed at recess.
One time I rolled a snowball that was bigger than me
and we had two fields at my school.
So we were up on the top field
and we were going to roll it down into the lower field.
And I was like, sweet.
So we get it rolling.
I'm like, you know, it'd be so cool.
People lose their fucking minds if I rode this thing down.
So I jumped on it as it was going downhill and it just fucking threw me
and just needed me into a swing set.
And I just laid there like that was fucking cool.
Oh, I want to sort of go further where like the swing
set launched you onto the slide, which launched you onto like the merry go
around. No back onto the snowball.
I'm like, baby, day out type shit. Yeah.
It just embeds me halfway into the snowball and then I'm
it's just my legs and the snowball is like walking around like all confused
until I walk into a wall and it splits and I'm there
and there's little birds floating around my head.
I'm not a fucking cartoon.
I'm a real person with real experiences.
Sean, just respect my life.
I think we're going to end on that.
That's it. We got it, guys. Good job.
Yeah, that's the end of the podcast.
We have just totally broken.
So tune in.
This is how Nick and I shopping friends tune into Nick and Sean
steal a podcast.
Yeah, we're still going to do podcast, just not this one anymore.
Apparently, Baby's Day out was a reference too far for me.
You know, I feel about children and I beams.
No, the best of talent.
Did you guys like this movie?
I found myself laughing out loud the entire time.
Nicholas Cage has an imaginary version of himself
that like talks to him and hypes him up and keeps him on track.
And it's just like the old Nicholas Cage interview
where he like goes on and he's like, hella coked out,
like he takes his shirt off and like has to reposition his mic
on his leather jacket.
And he's doing like karate kicks and stuff.
That young Nicholas Cage is now his internal hype man.
It's his ego.
But he like gets into an argument with it.
Yeah. Or with him on the road and like stops his car
and tells his imaginary friend to get out of his car.
It's insane how funny this movie is.
Now, this movie is hilarious.
In my opinion, let down by the third act referencing that adding a dumb
action movie to the end of your film isn't a good film.
And then doing it doesn't save from not being a good action film.
I think I think the action sequence would have been better served
if Nick Cage didn't just immediately become an action star
because he does straight up murder some people and doesn't blink an eye.
My favorite part is like Pedro Pascal and Nick Cage running through the woods.
They look like old dudes.
Yeah, they're like, oh, they are.
Shagging down the hill.
And like you play that up like fuck the action hero aspect of this.
And that's what's kind of my thing with it is, yeah,
it just gets to generic action movie within this genre of actors
playing themselves in absurd situations.
There's a great little film called My Name is Bruce about Bruce Campbell
playing Bruce Campbell down on his luck and is offered a bit of money
to make a public appearance, but gets there.
And it turns out the town is like haunted by a demon.
And they're like, you're Bruce Campbell.
Deal with this. And he's like, fuck you.
And is a bumbling buffoon the whole way, but still bumbles his way to success
and just doesn't become Ash at the end.
And yeah, Nick Cage just becomes Action Cage at the end of this with no bumbling.
More bumbling was, I feel, required.
I feel like we had the bumbling.
And I think this movie needed the action elements
because it just rounded out like everything from his career.
Like all of it was present in the movie.
If you didn't have that bit of it.
But then so the end of the film, they do the like
fake out into the premiere of the film based on these events.
It could have been great if by just dumb luck and just him being an actor,
but not being a good action guy that, you know, they do get there.
And then it cuts into this absurd moment where he does kill the drug kingpin.
And then it pulls back like, oh, that was the movie.
But anyway, so Nick in this cage goes,
goes to Majorca to meet his biggest fan.
Oh, man, because we did not recap this jump in straight to the end of the movie.
Giving it all away.
Yeah, but this is the second half, so we're not doing it in the first five minutes.
That's true. We've done a much better job.
So Pedro Pascal plays hobby, a huge Nick Cage fan who has written
a script and wants Nicholas Cage to star in it.
But Nick Cage loses out on the role of a lifetime.
I'm using air quotes there and decides he's done acting.
He was going to be a Boston cop, though,
and we know he could have fucking nailed that.
Yeah. OK.
So I want to know if like in the greater
audience ship of Nicholas Cage, like, is it just a thing
that he only does like a Boston accent?
Probably. Well, because when he just says that he's been working
on the Boston accent and he thinks he's really got it,
it just felt like that was targeted at me.
And how many times I've talked about his Boston accent.
Maybe for sure.
It did feel like we tapped into something on that.
To that, I do want to say I hadn't seen this movie until now.
Right. Same. And we got a lot of shit for this.
Like, how can you call yourself Nick Cage hands without seeing this film?
Like, we're going to fucking watch them all. We get to it.
Yeah. And I feel like I appreciate this movie more having watched
a bunch of Nick Cage films, like when they do the Leaving Las Vegas moment,
when Nick Cage is at his lowest and he just takes his beer
and just walks right into the pool, straight out of leaving Las Vegas.
Fun story with the director, like directing him through that scene.
Nick Cage goes, Yeah, I've done this before.
But so it turns out when Nick Cage gets to Mallorca,
we're giving we're making Peter do so much work.
No, he's given up.
He's like, you guys don't even listen to your own podcast.
Why the fuck will I? I'm just doing a no cut.
Oh, great.
When Nick Cage gets to Mallorca, kind of like my wiener,
it turns out that the CIA cut that out.
No, everyone's going to know you're uncut or am I?
Yeah, we need mystery.
But I've seen it. Yeah, I'm not going to say, but I've seen it.
It's how I know Nick's not a cartoon.
Sean doesn't kiss and tell.
So when Nicholas Cage gets to Mallorca,
turns out the CIA is watching Javi
because he's a international arms dealer.
Cartel man, cartel man, and they cartelman cartman.
Oh, man. Peter's going to Peter's going to yell at us so bad.
You guys are in trouble.
Oh, and so they they get Nicholas Cage
to help them try and track down the daughter of a president
or someone running for the election.
Yeah. Who they kidnapped at the end of the film.
He doesn't think it's Javi because of his, you know, years of acting.
He can read people, his shamanic thespian skills.
I loved that.
Oh, guys, it turns out that Nicholas Cage's thematic thespian skills,
you know, no more than the whole of the CIA.
Yeah. But they get him to spy on Javi.
And I mean, this is where the bumbling really happens.
He has to break into the camera room to bug all the cameras.
And when someone's coming up on him,
he gets the slip of like the knockout agent on his hand.
And then as he's leaving the door to find a place to hide,
he wipes the sweat from his brow.
That scene was so good. It was so good.
I think I touched my forehead.
You think you did? No, I'm.
Oh, I did. Yeah, I did.
OK, now go out the window and walk along a thin ledge.
OK, so I mean, this is all for comedy and chuckles and it does work.
But he does this that knockout agents not very strong
because he goes for a solid two minutes.
He definitely would have died even if he tried to knock the guy out.
Do you have no joy in your life, Sean?
I don't.
My ex wife was on the podcast last week.
Peter was a decision I made.
You did this to you.
I've said that I have lost the ability to feel joy.
And now I'm just trying to suffer for my sins like a good Catholic.
He does the spy.
He does some spy work.
Then they need to have him stay longer because they need to have tracked down
where the girl is at his birthday.
Says, you know, he read the script.
It's great.
Doesn't want to start it, but wants to stick around and write a film with Javi.
And that's when we get the best part of this film, which is just two friends
on acid. Yeah.
I mean, I think the the spycraft stuff is is fine.
I mean, it's a means to an end.
But like this movie is not at all served by that subplot.
No, I mean, I think the most important part
in what's really interesting is the the bromance between these two dudes. And like.
Well, it's a character driven movie.
It is. Yeah.
I've never been particularly like drawn to Pedro Pascal.
I think he's a great actor.
No, but he's never like done it for me in like, oh, that guy.
And this is the first movie that I was like, oh, I get what people are talking about.
Like that guy is he's charismatic. He's cute.
Like it works. It fucking works.
As a fellow Chilean, I love the man.
I don't know. Did you want to fuck Pedro Pascal?
Always, especially in the Mandalorian outfit.
I mean, no, but.
I mean, if I'm going to be honest,
and that's what this podcast really about fucking fine Cleveland steamer.
Sure. But but let's talk about the acid scene because it's the best.
Talk about the acid scene. Oh, my God.
But like, yeah. So Pedro Pascal is like, you know, they need to get
into this raw emotional state like he has the answer
and just holds up a violin.
Nick Cage is like trying to do a snoop into the secret room to see if the girls there.
It's like, what's that? It's acid.
What the hell? And just let's have a just squirt him in the mouth.
Next thing they're on the road, just staring at each other
while driving along a cliff edge.
Well, then later hobbies like I can't drive on acid.
Bro, you fucking did.
I don't know how you got us here.
Yeah, but I mean, like, OK.
Coming up on acid and being like solidly on acid,
especially when you think that's fair, because what got them to the point
where they're like running through town and trying to get like away
is they're talking about the film.
Javi has this great line or it's like, you know, this might be the acid talking,
but we could do a big scene where the main characters are on acid or on drugs.
So they're talking about like storytelling in a cage like, well, like,
what if we had a real paranoid scene where like the the main character
being followed, like, look at those two.
They might be following us.
And Javi just goes, oh, shit, are they following us?
The kids. I don't know. Are they?
They like get themselves into the spiral like this paranoia spiral.
And then they run and have my favorite scene, which is
them trying to like jump over the wall, jumping over the wall.
It was a table. Nicholas Cage.
Nick Cage can't lift him over the wall.
It has to leave hobby behind.
There's that slow motion. No.
When the cage drops down and just walks around, I was like, Mr. Cage.
No, there was a great line in
he's like trying to pick him up and he drops him.
And Nick Cage is like, you're heavier than you look.
I was like, I have a very big head.
Cage is just enormous and enormous head.
Just like he's complimenting your head so big, it's enormous.
It's terrific. It's wonderful.
And then they get to the other side of the wall.
They have a laugh and they look over.
And there are two other guys who look similar to the first two.
Yeah, it's a bald guy and another long haired ginger guy.
That's all they think of.
Oh, shit, they run.
But if you're on acid, that's that's more than enough.
Plenty. Yeah.
I would be freaked out if I was on an island with two long haired gingers.
Right. Can I say that word?
I can't say prostitute.
I'm pretty sure you can say ginger. OK.
I don't think that's a big I don't think that's a big hurtful one.
Oh, we're going to get so much hate.
Especially from the ginger sex workers.
When they're running back to the car, Javi gets hit by a car.
It's really Pedro Pascal did that.
Did that sound himself?
Pedro Scout wrecked or ruined 12 cars to get that shot.
He's got a big head. Yeah, enormous.
But yeah, they get back to the car.
It's like, I can't drive an acid.
I can't think you are better driving me.
How do you know that?
I read you did all your own driving for gone in 60 seconds.
Those wheelies were pretty good.
The best wheelies.
And then they like, yeah, they drive off and cage like drives up on the sidewalk.
He takes out like a shit ton of bicycles that are all just sitting there.
And when they get back to the compound, still on acid, Javi's like passed on the car.
Nick tries to go like into that room and Javi like.
Do you want to see what's in there?
Yeah, obviously, like obviously wakes up and like comes up and finds him.
And then it's just his collection of Nick Cage memorabilia.
Then that's when we see are introduced to the
Castor Troye statue of Nicholas Cage with the Golden Guns, which, like,
you know, those real guns, right?
But it's this horrible mannequin of Nicholas Cage with like a mo haircut.
It's like, can I ask how much you paid for this?
About six thousand dollars.
It's grotesque.
Yeah.
Grotesque.
If somebody presented me with like just a similar but not quite right statue of me.
Oh, my God. I'm like, oh, my God.
I would want it so bad.
I feel like Josie can make that happen.
Yeah.
I would even be happy with just a cardboard cut out of myself.
How cool is to be grotesque?
Yeah. I once tried to draw you on a beer can.
Yeah. People I was doing this for also knew you and they were just like, no,
it's too bro. Which I understand.
I'm a very muscular and, you know, tone.
Tone. Yeah. Handsome person.
Yeah. I've got like nine.
Come gutters. Yeah.
Where I don't think you know what come gutters are.
I'm pretty sure I introduced you to this. Probably.
Hobbies cousin turns out to be the real mobster hobbies, just a figurehead
and finds out that Nicholas Cage is working for the CIA
and wants hobby to kill the cage.
The cage has to take out hobby because
hobby thinks that the cage is having this like creative block
because he and his daughter aren't getting along.
So hobby brings his daughter and ex wife to the island.
And so they go to have like a shootout
or go kill each other on the cliff where they first became friends
beforehand, trading shoes.
Yeah, I liked that. I love that. I did, too.
They're just like complementing each other's shoes.
And they're like, do you want to trade like.
Forever. Yeah.
And then when they're running away from the people actually trying to kill them,
they're just bitching about each other's shoes
because there's no ankle support in the moccasins. Yeah. No shit.
So and then that's when the third act action film starts,
which does have a pretty good bit where the bad guy kidnaps Nick Cage's daughter.
So his ex wife is a makeup artist, makes him look like another gangster.
Yeah, like a Spanish guy who hasn't been seen for 15 years.
And just that's when we get like the worst Nick Cage acting in the film.
Oh, it's so good.
It's like he's actually trying to like make a character then.
And it's just maybe does such a great job of like having great actors act poorly.
They saved the president's daughter.
They save their own daughter.
There's a bit of a shootout.
Nick Cage repeats the Boston line from the beginning of the film.
There's a chase.
They get to the U.S. Embassy.
And at the end of it, Nick Cage's daughter throws him a knife
that got dropped in the back of the truck earlier.
He catches it midair, stabs dude in the chest.
Then it goes full Michael Bay camera around.
There's an American flag.
The military shows up and you turn back to his family and it's Demi Moore as the mom.
Incredible. It cuts out to this is a screening of a Nick Cage movie
written by Javi about the events of the film.
Yeah, it's perfect.
It gives you what they set out to do.
Highlights, obviously, Nicky.
Man, this movie, just every character, I think,
got some kind of like big, nice laugh out of me.
Everybody had really good comedy.
It was pretty well as the CIA agent is awesome.
Fun cage versa connection to that.
Guess who she was recommended by?
Just tell me Nick Cage, Nick Cage recommender on the advice
on the advice of our old friend.
That's not a fun fact.
Let me finish the god damn sense.
So there's a Schrader connection.
All right. Schrader did one thing right.
You're the Schrader.
Nicholas Cage turned down this role like three or four times
because he thought it was too weird.
And when he finally agreed to it, wanted to play the Javi role.
He wanted to be he thought it would be more meta for him to play his biggest fan.
It is more meta, but that and only fucking terrible.
Only only was cool playing himself after he met Pedro Pascal.
I thought Pedro Pascal was like this crazy method actor
who was just method acting all of this like love for Nick Cage.
And then later on, find out that Pedro Pascal has always been a huge fan.
Huge Nick Cage fan. Nick, do you have a quote?
I have many quotes. I have a favorite scene.
So this is Nick and Nicky talking.
And Nick is telling Nicky about how he's going to do this movie.
And Nick, he's trying to talk him out of it because he's not a small time actor.
He's a movie star.
Nick says he thinks it would be good for them to do it.
And Nicky comes in with like the gay uncle
in the next Diplos Brothers movie kind of thing.
Exactly. Then Nicky slaps him.
He's like, the fuck are you talking about?
We haven't worked since we were 15, 41 years
to be number seven on the call sheet of a goddamn student film.
I think it's a good idea.
You listen to me. You're Nick fucking.
And woo.
Ow. Cage.
Addy doesn't need a struggling artist to be her father.
She needs you to be a star.
Now you get the next one, baby.
And we're back. Nick Cage, breathily.
Not that we ever went anywhere.
Not that we went anywhere. Come here.
And then he just throws his toothpick, grabs Nick Cage
and like passionately kisses him right on the mouth.
So he has when Nicky pulls away.
Yeah. Nick Cage smooches good.
You tell him Nick Cage smooches good.
Yeah, it's a brilliant scene.
It's great. And it's just Nick Cage and Nick Cage.
My other favorite line was after Nick Cage watches
Harvey's third favorite film, Paddington 2 teary eyed sniffling.
Paddington 2 is incredible.
Have you guys seen Paddington 2?
No, I have not seen Paddington 1.
I've heard both of them are actually pretty fucking good.
Yeah.
Trevor Moore always spoke really highly of them.
I kind of feel like I should watch them.
Let's just do a podcast about Paddington. OK.
That's how easy it is to get the three of us to do anything.
I liked when Nick Cage was he like brings his daughter home.
This is in the beginning of the movie.
And he and Addy had just been at like family therapy or whatever.
And the mom is just like, oh, what's wrong with her?
As the kid storms off.
Nick just says, she's mad at me
because we watched Cabinet of Dr. Caligari together and she hated it,
which I find odd given how mature her taste normally is.
You're surprised your teenage daughter didn't want to watch
an insane hundred year old German film with you. Yes.
The director and writer just decided to write this thing.
Never met Nick Cage.
There's like, let's write a movie about Nick Cage.
We have no connection to him.
Maybe we'll get to make it one day.
Was it us?
Yeah, it sounds like we really went around this the wrong way.
Also, Nick Cage swore he would never watch this movie because it was too weird.
Even at the premiere was there, but wasn't in the theater.
So Venn diagram.
Good, good, good, good, good movie.
Now the real question.
The debate.
This is one of the few times where I'm kind of on the fence.
I think I would enjoy the trust more on rewatches.
I'm glad I watched the underweight of NASA talent.
It is funny.
I just I the back half just kind of kills me.
I would probably argue for unbearable weight in the same way.
The last third of the trust just wasn't quite there.
Plus, it leaves too many things.
It's not as finished of a movie, but I think unbearable weight is just
it's a more enjoyable movie.
Pound for pound, it's a more cage movie
as it is 100 percent about how it's going to be.
My next point is out of the both of them.
I mean, Cage gives an amazing performance in both and he gives a very cagey
performance in both. He does.
I'll be happy to watch either of these movies again in my life,
and I will continue to watch them.
I would rather see unbearable weight go forward.
I think it's just I think it's a better comedy.
It's better for the category.
It's a stronger script.
It's better performances.
It's Elijah Woods. Great.
But there's a much larger cast that all contributes
really good performances in unbearable weight.
It's absurd. It's truly an absurd movie.
I'm just going to use our movie podcast all of a sudden.
In Germany, we are.
Yeah, that's right. Thanks, Germans. Yeah.
So cool. So cool.
No, I I think you are right.
And like I said, I was on the fence for either of these going forward,
because I do enjoy them both in different ways.
The Trust is an interesting movie.
He has an interesting character.
It's just not well developed.
That's fair.
Whereas I think the unbearable weight is an interesting movie
with two interesting characters and a whole CIA subplot
that could have been written around real easy.
Yeah, but it adds wackiness.
I think you could take all of that out of there and Javi could just be
this, you know, maniac obsessive and trying to figure out like,
does this guy want to like take my skin and wear it?
So, Harvey, does he want me to like blow him or like,
does he want to watch me fuck his wife or have me watch him?
Fuck, I am Harvey. Nailed it.
I just did the bow.
Thanks. Thank you.
I'm taking I'm taking the Nick roll of this podcast.
Confirming. Yeah.
Unbearable weight.
Bearable weight. Massive talent.
A great movie.
Can't wait to see it move forward.
What's coming up next week?
We kind of touched on this in the beginning, but Joe and Zanderly.
Zanderly. Zandali.
Whatever it's going to be. Zandaya?
We're not sure. We're going to.
So it's a movie about a guy who takes in a kid who's being abused
and a movie where Nick Cage is a horny artist.
It's going to be terrific. It's going to be a real romp.
Well, thank you all for listening.
If you are interested in interacting with us,
you can find us on Reddit or Twitter or any of the other things.
But Reddit is CageMatchPod.
And if you happen to be interested in supporting us,
we are on Patreon at CageMatch.
So as always, thank you to our Sparkle buddies, Josh, Sean,
Josie, Rico, Matt and Adam.
And special thanks to our cage dancers, Ira and John.
We're at episode 18. We've got.
14 more episodes.
Thanks for the math. In season one.
Yeah. And then in season two, we don't know what we're doing.
We'll figure it out. Send us send us your ideas.
What you'll figure it out for us. Do our jobs for us.
Now, we totally know what we're doing, but it's a secret.
So don't even bother trying to figure it out.
It's a really good idea to know.
But send us your theories.
Send us five dollars in your theory
in a self-addressed stamped envelope to what's your address, Peter?
Yeah. Put that on the Internet.
Goodbye, everybody.
Like, maybe I'll get real.
Maybe I'll have like a giant sandwich one day
and love the unbearable weight of massive talent.
Anytime you say sandwich, you have to give me like a big gap
just so it sounds funnier.
All right. Maybe one day I'll have a giant sandwich.
No, you didn't do it right.
Oh, no. Gap in the beginning.
And at the end, I was giving you one at the end.
Yeah, you gave me a big one at the end.
A big, big one in the end.
Cut it out.
Boy, that's going to that's an outtake.
And then Eddie Murphy bus out of nowhere
and sticks a banana in his tailpipe.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Why? It can't be that bad.
It can't be that good either.
I like that we're going to eat them like Ryan and all.
Like he doesn't take the peel off.
I'm taking I'm just going to know you got to do it.
I have a horrible gag reflex. I can't do it.
Oh, my God. Now you really have to do it.
I mean, it's Peter's floor. I'll throw up here. Yeah.
You know, box right there.
It's the puzzle box.
Where where's where's the place I can throw up and he can find it later.
Got the globe. How do you open the globe?