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THE VIEWING GUIDE
A deep dive into the must-see moments from the month’s big release
The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
TOM GORMICAN (WRITES, directs) and Kevin Etten (writes) are the architects of one of the year’s wildest swings: a buddy-comedy-cum-metatreatise-on-action-movies that sees Nicolas ‘Nic’
Cage star as Nicolas ‘Nick’ Cage, a fading film star who rediscovers himself after forging a friendship with a suspected arms dealer. Here, the filmmakers talk us through its key moments.
CAGE AIR
The movie opens with Nicolas Cage, of course. But not Gormican/Etten’s Cage. Instead, we see Cage in all his pomp, as a bored young girl (Katrin Vankova) watches Con Air on TV, only to be rudely interrupted by a team that kidnaps her. “We had flirted with both Face/Off and Con Air,” says Gormican. “It ended up being much funnier in the end to do the heroic, ridiculous Cameron Poe character.” The sequence replaced an opening shot which zoomed in on Cage standing on top of the Sunset Tower Hotel in LA, with “a giant gospel version of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ playing.