November 30, 2022 • 48 mins
Nic Cage’s infamous comics heist proves irresistible to Hollywood, which mounts a film version of the theft — yet the finished movie has never been released. Plus: a different Superman origin story, about the time Cage donned the cape and tights.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Nick Cage is in a Superman costume. It's not for Halloween,
and it's not just because he feels like it. It's
because in Cage is set to star in Superman Lives,
the first new live action Superman movie in ten years.
(00:25):
It's taken Warner Brothers, which owns DC Comics that long,
to find the right pairing of star and director to
bring one of their most valuable assets back to the screen.
Cage will star as the Man of Steel. Tim Burton,
who ushered in the modern era of comic book movies
in with Batman, will direct their Superman will be a
(00:48):
bit of an outcast, an alien from another planet who
doesn't quite fit in here, and everyone believes Cage is
perfect for the role. Cage looks great in the It's
crafted from rubber, like Michael Keaton's Batman costume, to give
more muscle definition to his already trim physique. His hair
(01:09):
is long and dyed black, reminiscent of Superman's mullet when
he came back from the dead in the comics. Back
In one version of the suit, led lights make it
light up like a screen at a rave. Cage looks
in the mirror and seems satisfied with what he sees.
He's always had an affinity for Superman, for someone who
(01:31):
tried to conduct himself with dignity and tried to act
with a moral compass. He just spent a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars on Action Comics number one, and it's
easy to think he did it in part to feel
a connection with the mythology. Cage has often spoken about
having talisman, physical objects that can help him get a
(01:52):
better feel for a role. What could get him in
tune with playing Superman more than possessing the cultural artifact
of where it all began. In fact, he bought two copies,
the one in terrific condition that was stolen and a
second one that wasn't quite as well preserved. Some collectors
call this an under copy. It's sort of like settling
(02:14):
for the comic you want in an average condition until
the holy Grail comes along. The under copy is the
one Cage sold off in his massive public auction in
two thousand and two. Here's William Hughes, who brokered the sale.
I thought that one was a restored copy, so it
might have just been one that he had all along.
(02:36):
And then he upgraded when he had the opportunity to
get the nice, high grade copy. That's a frequent occurrence
in the hobby where you know the higher end buyers,
they have a lasser copy and in the upgrade when
the opportunity arises. But there are bumpy times ahead. For
one thing, Cages stand in. A man named Marco Kyus
(02:59):
didn't have as much luck donning the iconic suit as
Cage did. I went in for a costume fitting. Unfortunately,
at that point I had gained a lot of weight,
probably twenty five pounds heavier than Nick, and I was
kind of bloated looking and said, I think during face
off around that time, and I went in for a
fitting and the costume were just staring at me and said,
(03:19):
are you like Alec Baldwin's standing that's Marco. I said no,
I'm in a cage is stand it. And he's like, oh,
how did you get that job? It's like you're really overweight.
I said, yeah, I know at the time you could
say these things, and I said, yeah, I know, I've
I've been getting a lot of weight on the film set.
That's when the costume designer had to get creative. The
(03:40):
funny part was they had to roll it up. The
rubber had to be rolled up over my fat and
then zip me up, so everything was kind of like
squished inside. It was so embarrassing. I was so out
of shape, and I was so unlikely to be Superman standing.
It would be a joke. It would be It would
be a farce. Farce is not a bad way to
(04:01):
describe Cage's Superman a movie project. The movie would soon
fall by the wayside, and Cage's best version of that comic,
which was procured to celebrate and fuel that role, would
be stolen. But you know all that. What you may
not know is this wouldn't be the only time Nicholas
(04:22):
Cage and Superman would be the subjects of a single
feature film. But instead of Cage playing Superman, someone would
be playing Cage, several actors actually, including a woman, and
the movie wouldn't be about Superman, but about the theft
of Cage's copy of Action Number One, a holy fictional,
(04:46):
very meta version of the story that was written by
two superstar Hollywood writers, filmed, edited, and never released. No
one's ever seen it. Even it's a rector couldn't get
a copy. The only thing more mysterious than the fate
of Cages Action number one is the fate of the
(05:08):
movie about Cages Action number one. Like that famous comic,
it disappeared without a trace. Today we're going to find
out why. For I Heart Radio, this is Stealing Superman.
(05:33):
I'm your host, Danis Schwartz, and this is episode five
now a major motion picture. The war that comes to
me is that it was a trip, you know, to
play someone named Nick Cage and two version as of
someone named Nick Cage. It was terrifying. I mean I
(05:54):
had to say that I was actually very nervous to
go towards this. But I believe that if you're a something,
if as long as doesn't hurt you or anybody else,
you should go towards it and you might learn something.
You've probably heard of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
It's a film that was released earlier this year and
(06:16):
started Nicolas Cage. As Nicolas Cage, the movie version of
Cage is at a crossroads in his career, much like
the real Cage, who fell off the Hollywood A list
about a decade ago and has been working steadily in
lower budget a fair The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which,
as fans of the whole brevity thing will call Massive Talent,
(06:39):
sees a fictionalized version of Cage having that same experience.
He's having an existential crisis and agrees to perform for
a drug dealer at the dealer's birthday party. Chaos ensues,
and so does a lot of tongue in cheek commentary
on Cage's career. He not only plays himself, but versions
(06:59):
of him, all at different times in his life. Face
Off Eric Cage, Wild at Heart Eric Cage. The movie
allowed Cage to seize control of his story back from
snarky Internet commenters who were very preoccupied with his grandiose
acting choices and some of his b movie roles. Critics
liked Massive Talent. It was quote smart, funny, and wildly creative,
(07:24):
according to one review, but it wasn't the first time
Cage had been approached to play himself in a movie.
The initial pitch was, we knew this thing had happened
where this copy of Action Comments number one went missing
from Cage's house, and like that was the starting premise,
and then the approach to it was like, well, what
(07:45):
if it was this sort of ocean's eleven style heist
by these sort of like friends who an't hanging around
a comic book shop where they find out he's got it,
and they consider themselves Oceans eleven and they're going to
break in and they're gonna get it and sell it
and get rich off of it, and they're all at
the that to Alex Fernie. Alex is a director primarily
of television comedies like Key and Peel and comedy Bang Bang.
(08:08):
A few years ago, a script landed on his desk.
It was titled Action Number One, and it was another
meta Cage story, but this one was about one very
specific incident in Cage's life, the theft of that rare
comic from his home, and then the approach to Cage
(08:30):
was obviously a very heightened version of him, where he
becomes this sort of like bad guy antagonist who's trying
to track them down and hires a hitman to kill
them because they stole his most beloved belonging. So it
really takes that first actual thing to happen, which memory
serves it was by large. He had a party and
the next day it was just gone, but he didn't
know how long it had been missing him. And turned
(08:52):
it into this sort of pisty thing where he's the
anti Garcia from Motions eleven. The script was written by
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Grant, a screenwriting team responsible
for some major hits like The Night at the Museum
franchise with Ben Stiller. You've probably seen them too. In
addition to being co creators with Carrie Kenny Silver, Lennon
(09:15):
Grant were actors on Reno nine, one, the cult hit
on Comedy Central about annept Nevada Cops. Lennon played Lieutenant
Jim Dangle, Grant was Deputy Travis Jr. When the two
heard about Cage's comic book heist, their story Antenna went
off a famous actor suffering an art theft. Only it
(09:37):
was a rare comic and not just any actor, but
Nicholas Cage, avowed Superman fan and someone once slated to
play him. That was a movie premise, so Lennon and
Grant concocted a fictionalized version of the story. They didn't
need to adhere to facts. Instead, they tell you who
(09:58):
the thieves are right out the game. The script is
from their point of view. It's a group of comic
book collectors who get wind of Cagees priceless comic collection
and the easy access to Action number one. Oh yeah
yeah the second Ben and Tom mentioned me as like,
I absolutely know that story because it is so nuts,
and I feel like around that same time, when people
(10:19):
were like passing around the test footage of him a
superman and stuff, that was all a lot of discussion
of him and his comic books and stuff would come up,
and then this story was like so perfectly right down
the middle of that perception of him that I very
much remember it. I think part of what makes it
so interesting, beyond sort of the meanness of Nick Cage,
(10:44):
is that I think Cage is a incredibly sincere person
in a time when that is kind of rare. He
likes his things, he likes his weird cripts, he likes
his comic books. That's who he is and that's what
he likes. That feels more relatable than if it was
like someone stole a two hundred thousand dollar car from
(11:04):
Matt Damon. That wouldn't be interesting. But this is because
it's so specific both the man and his interests that
it just feels like another world right, Like it feels
like fiction it's not quite Ocean's Eleven. The thieves are
inept and kind of bumbling. The Cage of the movie
(11:25):
is well, he's even more bombastic than the parodies of
Cage floating around out There. He hires a hit woman
to find and assassinate his comic thieves while the team
tries to ransom the book back to Cage. Lennon and
Grant were working on the project as far back as
at the time. They hoped Nicholas Cage would agree to
(11:46):
play himself a very exaggerated, very murdering version of himself,
and Cage thought about it. He danced around the project
wondering if parodying his out there persona was a good
idea or not. When I came on board. Basically, they
had spent a while chasing Cage trying to get to
do it, and he was thinking about and kind of
(12:07):
like going back and forth. This really isn't as ludicrous
as it may sound. A while back, there was a
script floating around titled Chad Schmidt, about a struggling actor
who bears an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt. Chad is
forced to watch as his doppelganger, who is portrayed as
a buffoon trips into fame while poor Chad is relegated
(12:31):
to never was status. Brad Pitt was interested in playing
Chad Schmidt, as well as the script's doof as version
of himself, but when they couldn't settle on a director,
it fell by the wayside. Still being John Malkovich, playing
yourself can work, but not for Cage. After circling action
(12:52):
number one, he decided he didn't want to play an
exaggerated version. For a minute, there was talk of Jason
Statham being involved. Whether he was going to play Cage
or one of the thieves was unclear, but that also
wound up not happening. That left the production with no
choice but to get inventive. By this point it was
(13:13):
under the banner of Awesomeness Entertainment, a production company that
since had phenomenal success with the Netflix franchise To All
the Boys I've Loved Before. Awesomeness recruited Fernie to direct
the script. All they needed to do was cast someone
to be Nicholas Cage, but that's not easy to do,
(13:34):
so I rewrote My rain Partners a little bit, and
then it kind of came on at that point to
direct it and to kind of figure out what we
going to do about the fact that this movie about
Nick Cage isn't going to have Nick Cage in it.
So if Cage didn't want to be Cage and no
other actor could step into his shoes, the filmmakers had
(13:55):
to devise another solution, and it would be an odd
acious one. There've been all this talk about like should
we just never see Cage? Should it be like a
Charlie's Angels thing, whereas only ever a voice on a thing,
you always see him from behind stuff. And I didn't
want to do that at all because that felt to
me like a cheap or like that felt like that
would be obvious that we couldn't do the thing that
(14:17):
we wanted to do, which was a Nick Cage. And
so then I was like, well, if it's weirder and
if it's purposeful and we see these scenes where Nick
Cage does show up but it's always a different actor,
that's something we can kind of lean into. The Responsibility
of playing Cage wouldn't fall on one person's shoulders. Four
of them could share the unbearable weight. It was also
(14:41):
a decision that broadcasts the film's intentions. This wasn't going
to be a gritty true crime tale. It was going
to be light on its feet, fun and hopefully funny.
If we've got the other way, I think we would
have pulled out of most of his scenes and just
had there be some sort of standing for him, who
isn't him, who works for him or someth thing. But
because we did that, we only kind of worked these
(15:02):
scenes in, and then that kind of impacted when Cage
shows up in the script, because we wanted to kind
of space out these different comedy folks who play him
coming in. But it also gave us ability to have
the fictional Nick Cage character show up throughout in a
way that didn't feel like, yeah, they're really avoiding the
fact that the person the movie is about isn't in
(15:23):
the movie. According to Alex, Cage was okay with this plan.
He decided he didn't want to do it, but gave
his blessing to play the role of Cage. Producers cast
for people that actors who play him are Rob Hubil
and Missy Pyle and the Uncle and Rob Cordrey. The
actors would play Cage in different scenes when the script
called for Cage to make an appearance to play the
(15:46):
comic book Thieves. Jimmy Tetro, Mike Castle, and Haley Magnus
were cast. Tetro is probably best known now for his
role on the ABC sitcom Home Economics. In the movie,
Tetro's character, Brian In is a stereo installer who gets
into cages home and notices the action number one. He
(16:07):
convinces his friends to break in and grab the comic,
which is just sitting on a coffee table. Alex started
shooting the movie in Vancouver in the fall of and no,
Vancouver wasn't intended to be a stand in for Los Angeles.
(16:27):
That was where the production could get the most out
of its budget, So Cage the movie Cage had to relocate.
It was literally based on where we were able to
because it would have made sense to do New Orleans
the tax cuts, where we're like, okay, make it work
in Seattle or Vancouver. You can shoot in Vancouver. It's like, Okay,
it's never going to really make sense, but we can
(16:47):
just claim that he has a house here and we
just go from there. And it mostly went off without
a hitch. The leads had good chemistry. The script was funny,
and the conceit of Cage being played by different performers
was definitely going to get the movie some attention. But
it was important that while the movie would have fun
with Cage, it wouldn't make fun of Cage. Yeah, there
(17:10):
was that, and there was like right before we started
shooting too, there's a bunch of cold feat that like
this was too weird. And then I think once we
did it it where it talls like, oh, this is fun,
And I think that's the most fun stuff in the
movie because everyone knows that, everyone knows his thing and
it's great and everyone likes it, and I think that's
more fun, like more like I guess, celebratory. When the
Cage actors would come on set, Alex explained that he
(17:33):
wasn't looking for a Cage impression, more of a Cage essence.
All of the actors who played him, every one of
them was afraid of it when I first approached them
to do it, because it is such a weird ask
you when come to Vancouver for like a day and
play Nick Cage, and every one of them I had
to kind of walk through, like we're not looking for
a very authentic, accurate impression when I have been look
(17:56):
for impression and all we just want people to kind
of play what you think his ibe is, what his
energy is, in whatever way that means to you. And
all four of them are recognizably Nick Cage, but do
it in very different ways, which I think is very cool.
But they were all at first kind of like what
what is what is this? Like I'm not an impression
this to be, Like no, no, you don't have to be,
(18:17):
especially when it's like Missy Pyle coming up being like
you brought me up to play this man for this
one scene, like yeah, okay, I'll talk you through it.
And then everyone got it and they were all very fun.
After shooting, Fernie edited the film. It was scored in
today's streaming landscape, it didn't seem like there would be
much of an issue finding a home. They all needed content,
(18:39):
especially during a pending pandemic when productions were being shut
down left and right. And then we kind of wrapped
up the post. I had hoped for some reshoots and
some other stuff that ended up falling apart. We probably
should have been the first time, but it right at
the end of that there was a conversation I had
had with some of the Awesomeness people, and they were
excited about it, and they're talking a where they're going
to do it. And then I never talked to people
(19:00):
a get because they all left the company, and I
don't think I ever had another conversation with someone at
the Dust Company. Again, it's like we sent it in
not even really acknowledgement of it, and then it just
like literally disappeared. And it went from being like, this
is really fun, we'll get this out there, We've got
some plans, we'll keep talking about it too, we're all quitting,
we're all going to start our own companies, and then
(19:20):
just dead silence for at this point now five years.
It's not as though Cage had ever had particularly good
luck with Superman movies. At the height of his box
office stature in the late nine nineties, he agreed to
play Superman, his first ever superhero role. He had and
(19:44):
would be connected to other comic book projects like Constantine,
which eventually went to Keanu Reeves. For the record, It's
pronounced Constantine in the comics and Hard Boiled, a pulp
comic written by comics legend Frank Miller, but Superman was
the Big One, a beautiful freak, Cage said of the character.
(20:05):
When Cage accepted the role in he was about to
kick off an incredible run of action movie hits Conner
Face Off the Rock. Those three movies combined made over
half a billion dollars. He had transformed himself from an
eccentric character actor who ate live cockroaches and vampire's kiss
(20:27):
to a more refined version of Sylvester Stallone and Don't
Forget This Superman was also an Oscar winner for leaving
Las Vegas. Cage's run in the nineties was something to
witness firsthand. It was an opportunity afforded to a select
group of people. One of them was Marco Kiras, Cage's
(20:48):
tenured stand in. Not a stunt devil. Marco doesn't do
any jumping. You can't set Marco on fire. But when
you need someone who looks like Cage to stand in
Cage's place while the lighting is being set up, that's
how you've called. For years. Marco had often been told
he looked a lot like Cage. Yes, yeah, often, but
(21:09):
different people, they said, Cage and Alec Baldin. Depends on
how heavy I was getting. Joe Montagna Cage. You know,
it just depended on my look, my attire. But Marco
didn't really want the job at first. After being in
Los Angeles for a few years and doing the waiter thing,
sure he recognized an opportunity. It was a chance to
(21:29):
double for Cage in the heist comedy Trapped in Paradise.
But the gig was in the winter in Toronto, the
coldest winter in years, and so I said no. I said,
thank you so much. I've never done the job, but
I decline, and they all got piste off at me
because it was the perfect fit for the Cage, and
they convinced me to do the job. So I actually
(21:51):
then took the job. He came with perks right off
the top. I didn't know any different, to tell you
the truth, but that's where it all happened. So I
was a real needed fit. I had all the union work,
and I had film experience, but not standing experience. So
to me it was a bit of a degrading position.
But I realized it was a really necessary position. So
(22:12):
when I started to work in this film, within a month,
he was very interested in me, and he thought I
was very good, and basically I followed the rules and
I did the right stuff, and he asked me to
go on tour with him as a standard, and I did.
I had nothing else going on in life. It was
very unique to be in a position where Nick Cage
was the biggest star in the world and I was
the biggest star standing in the world, and I didn't
(22:36):
really know it or appreciate it because we are working
so many films and in so many locations that our
hands were just constantly in the work. Whatever Marco might
have felt about the job before, it turned out to
be a pretty good deal. There were perks. Cage didn't
just buy stuff for himself, he bought stuff for everyone
(22:56):
around him. Yeah, it was. It was definitely travel because
obviously I did all those films and traveled, and they
put you up to the hotels to give you a
rent a car, to give you per deems on a contract.
It was a real perky package. A lot of gifts
from Cage. That guy showers you with gifts. The guy
is the biggest giver I had ever met in my life,
(23:19):
let alone in Hollywood. Oh my god. Everything anything from
designers suits to jackets to luggage to expensive bottles of wine.
And Scotch and right down to a Rolex watch. I
mean just endless gifts, just gives you never expect in
your lifetime in the position that I had, and it
wasn't only me, it was everybody, So we all benefited
(23:40):
because of his generosity. He's just a person who's beyond thankful.
So Cage and Marco was in a prime position in
the nineties as Warner Brothers was gearing up to make
a new Superman movie. The studio hadn't made one since
Superman four, The Quest for Peace, in which was Christopher
(24:02):
Reeve's last outing as the character. Since then, it had
been a parade of scripts and pitches, which ranged from
Superman rescuing the tiny bottle city of Candor to fighting Brainiac,
one of his most famous comic book villains. There was
even a brief announcement of a Superman five starring Reeve,
(24:23):
but it never got beyond the talking stages. Reeve suffered
from a catastrophic horse riding accident in that left him
paralyzed from the neck down. Warner had been focused on
their Batman franchise, which had been ushered to the screen
by a producer and Batman super fan named Michael Uslan.
(24:44):
He steered the production away from ideas like Bill Murray
as Batman and straight to Tim Burton. Burton had developed
a reputation for making movies about outcasts, like Beetlejuice and
Peewee's Big Adventure. Burton made Batman a huge hit nine,
and then he made a sequel in Batman Returns. A
(25:06):
third Batman movie, Batman Forever, was released in without Burton.
Warner obviously saw potential in their comic book Slate. The
next move was to bring back Superman. Now the Man
of Steel had been popping up. There was a syndicated
(25:26):
Superboy series in the early nine nineties which was devoted
to the character's college life. There was also Lewis and
Clark The New Adventures of Superman, an ABC hit about
a more domestic Clark Kent that starred Dean Kane and
Terry Hatcher. But Warner had always been apprehensive about investing
a lot of money on a major new Superman movie.
(25:50):
You had to treat Superman with kid gloves. He was
more than just the first superhero. He was, in their eyes,
a commodity, and at the time, putting someone in tights
with sincerity was always caused for concern. Even Batman went
from a gritty Michael Keaton to Val Kilmer joking about
(26:12):
taking the Batmobile to drive throughs. Was anyone going to
buy the big Blue Boy Scout in the grunge era?
The involvement of Tim Burton and Nicholas Cage seemed to
convince them. Burton had imagined Batman as a dark hero,
absolving the character from the pop art incarnation of the
nineties sixties Adam West television series. If he could do
(26:35):
it for Batman, who was much maligned by then, he
could certainly do it for Superman. Burton was the director
Cage wanted. They agreed that Superman would be an outsider,
an element that hadn't really been explored on film. How
would you feel if you were the most powerful being
on the planet? Would you feel emboldened or ostracized? Age
(27:00):
was excited by this. He felt Superman was a way
of telling kids it was okay to be different. He
felt like a character this big and this well known
had a direct line to children, and he wanted a
positive message to be delivered to them. He invited Burton
over to his house for a brainstorming session while a
(27:20):
screenwriter named Wesley Strike took copious notes. Cage liked talking
about it. The word was you know, he really wanted
to do it. It was a different take on Superman.
He did ask me if I met the director, I
find you Tim Burton, And to my surprise, he didn't
know Tim Burton because he's also from Los Angeles. And
I said, yes, I've met him and I've worked with him.
(27:41):
I said, you're gonna love this guy. He's just brilliant. Well,
it would be something different, it would still be a
major blockbuster. In Superman lives, Superman would have to deal
with both Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who developed a relentless
monster named Doomsday that can match the heroes Braun. After
(28:02):
seemingly dying, Superman is resurrected and goes on to conquer
his enemies and hopefully the box office. There would be
happy Meal, toys and sequels, and maybe even a team
up with Batman. Cage wasn't the only big attraction either.
Burton wanted Jim Carey to play Brainiac, Sandra Bullock was
(28:22):
considered for Lois Lane, and Chris Rock was cast as
Jimmy Olsen. So Werner began writing checks a lot of checks.
Millions were spent on sets, on script ory rights, on costuming.
Location experts started scouting Pittsburgh to stand in from Metropolis.
(28:42):
Cage threw himself into the role. For one thing, he
bought a copy of Action Comics Number one, maybe to
have a physical connection with the history of the character.
It was one thing to steep yourself in comic book
mythology and another to become a part of it. But
that's what he was doing, becoming a new version of
(29:04):
a hero he had long admired. It was an intriguing
blend of Americana and cages surrealist approach to acting. Who
wouldn't want to see this film? Then it was time
for Cage to go in for a costume fitting. So
did his body devil Marco Kiris. We know what happened,
(29:24):
but Marco says he would have lost weight. Yeah, I
would have lost the weight. The footage is out there online.
You can probably find it, though of course we can't
indorse the unauthorized distribution of such material. But when you
see it, you immediately notice how wonder struck Cages by
being in the iconic costume. It's a little stiff. All
(29:48):
this molded rubber, and it needs professional cinematography, not the
camcorder someone is using to record the fitting. But how
the costume looks isn't really what's important. Cage is looking
at himself in a mirror, as though a boyhood dream
were coming true. He had come so far from childhood
(30:09):
when he once dressed as Batman for Halloween, but then
lost the cape, so he had to use a green
plaid blanket instead. You can imagine that little boy not
quite believing what's happening now, But that sense of wonder
couldn't last. Burton and Cage worked on the Superman movie
(30:30):
for roughly a year. The first sign of trouble came
when Warner realized Cage it was due to start shooting
a film called Snake Eyes for director Brian de Palma
in October. The start of that film overlapped with the
shooting schedule for Superman Lives, which turned into a territorial
(30:51):
tug of war for Cages services. Neither studio wanted to
back down, both believed they had the right to retain Cage.
When that was resolved, Superman Lives appeared ready for takeoff,
but as they often did, executives at Warner brothers started
to second guess their decision. Was Burton really the right
(31:14):
person to reinvent Superman. His esthetic worked beautifully for Batman,
who fit perfectly into Burton's dark and gothic visions, but
Superman was something else, entirely a bright, optimistic hero. They
started to worry Superman was about to get weird and expensive,
(31:36):
and Cage didn't exactly convince them otherwise. He wanted to
play Superman as an outcast, a lost soul. Calling him
a beautiful freak probably didn't make the Happy Meal people
too confident. Warner had to make a decision and quickly.
In the end, they decided to pull the plug on
(31:58):
Burton and Cage. A Warner executive named Bill Gerber had
to call Cages manager Jerry Harrington. The executive said it
was one of the most uncomfortable calls he had ever
had to make in the business. Superman lives was dead.
The only footage of Nicholas Cage as Superman would be
(32:19):
some costume tests shot on VHS. According to Marco, Cage
was devastated. I think it would have been great. I
think it was very disappointed that it didn't happen. I
think It's one of the things that he wanted to
do forever, and now he can't come back to because
he's a different age group and you know it's not
gonna work. Marco worked with Cage for a few more
(32:41):
years and then the two had a bit of a
falling out. Marco isn't too eager to discuss details, but
something happened in South Africa where Cage was shooting a film.
Some events happened while we were in South Africa, and
when we got back, he had already dismissed a couple
of key entourage members, and when we got back, three
(33:04):
or four of us were then let go at the
same time. So nobody really knows exactly what happened because
it wasn't mentioned. It was only mentioned through his producer.
And it was a bitter moment than it just ended.
Not that we weren't tired and everybody was working and
overworked at this time, but it was kind of like
a blow to us that it all just kind of
(33:24):
ended with one phone call, and not just for me,
but for a few of us. Just one other thing, Marco,
did you no, no, no, I've never seen the comics
other than what was reported on the news or a
picture of them somewhere. I've never actually seen them, but
that's a that's a good spinner. Marco isn't sure who's
(33:45):
responsible for taking the books, but he thinks it's certainly
conceivable it was an inside job, and the idea of
that bums him out. Because Cage was a good boss.
They don't understand his generosity, they don't understand his commitment
to the people who work for him. So if anybody
steals from him, it's just you've crippled him. It's like
a little child. Why would you steal from somebody who
(34:06):
gives you so much. Marco left the film industry and
went into real estate, where he's done well. Cage, meanwhile,
wouldn't get a chance to play a comic book character
until two thousand seven, when he started as Johnny Blaze
in ghost Writer. There was one upside, though. Cage's Superman
deal was reported to be pay or play, meaning he
(34:28):
got paid even if the movie never got made. He
took home four million dollars all for trying on a suit.
At least he could buy some more comics. Burton got
paid too, so did the countless screenwriters who'd been working
on the movie since Warner had sunk tens of millions
(34:49):
into a new Superman film and had nothing to show
for it. So maybe a movie not about Superman but
about Cage being a fan of Superman would be different, right.
Alex Fernie shot the action number one movie in the
(35:11):
fall of and had it pretty much done in and
while it probably wasn't due for a major theatrical rollout,
he was pretty sure it would wind up in his
Netflix queue. That had been kind of my impression. What
had been told to me was the idea was Awesomeness
the production company, I think, a good relationship like Netflix
(35:33):
and some other place, and be like, we'll probably gonna
make this for streaming. We'll see if there's a distributor
wants to do it, and maybe we'll do like some
festivals and then go to streaming, which is great, slow
budget thing. I actual think it could have found a
home there. People could have discovered it, but as the
months went by, no one at Awesomeness was reaching out
to offer a production update. Fernie asked about it but
never got a response. It was not very awesome. Literally,
(35:57):
no one knows or has any good answers. They just
kind of like went away because we tried to be like, well,
I bet we could get some fun like festivals to
do it feels like it would be fun for that.
Couldn't get that to happen. My guests as to what happened,
and this is one conjecture on my part, is around
(36:18):
that time Awesomeness also started. I feel like they kind
of like focused in on a certain demographic and a
certain approach that this movie didn't fit with, and they
didn't know what to do with it, so they just
kind of put it away. That's my best guess. Okay,
that kind of makes sense. Awesomeness moved in a different direction,
But that doesn't explain that for years Fernie couldn't even
(36:40):
get a copy of his own film from the company.
They seemed reluctant to acknowledge it even existed. I couldn't
even get a copy of it for myself to see,
which was insane. That's with like executive producers trying to
get it, that they couldn't get it. We probably shouldn't
say if we were among those who caught a screen
of this elusive movie, but if we were, hypothetically we
(37:04):
suppose it might involve Cage being very irate that his
copy of Action Comics Number one has been stolen, and
unlike the real Cage, who was upset but somewhat resigned
to his fate, this version of Cage decides to enlist
the services of an assassin to hunt down the thieves.
(37:26):
The movie, Cage appears in a few scenes. As we discussed,
every time he shows up, he's played by a different actor.
There's no in movie explanation for this. It's kind of
like that Bob Dylan movie where Dylan was played by
everyone from Cate Blanchette to Christian Bale. It's a little
surrealist as a nod to the very surrealist actor they're portraying.
(37:50):
The movie culminates in a showdown at a comic convention,
and even though the film isn't circulating, it still feels
in poor form to spoil it, so we'll just say
it's well, it's fine. It's not an affront to humanity.
It's a modestly budgeted movie that dips along. That's what's
(38:10):
so weird is there's no one in it who has
become problematic sense, and you would think that there would
be places it could go to at least make them
some money, but they would rather spare it. And again, also,
I know this sounds like it's like, oh, it's probably
so bad that they're bearing, because that's what I would assume.
I don't think it's perfect and I don't think I
(38:31):
hit a home run on it, but I think it,
by and large works, and that's one of the things
that surprises me is that it just disappeared. So we
reached out to Peter Principato, the owner of Artists First,
the management and production company that represents Alex along with
the writers Thomas Lennon and Robert ben Grant. Artists First
(38:52):
also helped produce the movie. Peter told us in an
email that he simply doesn't know that he wishes he
could answer of the question. He went on to say
that Awesomeness controls the movie and there's been some executive
turnover and as a result, the release of the film
has gotten completely lost. So we went to Awesomeness. We
(39:14):
reached out to a number of executives. The question was
pretty straightforward. You made a movie and own the rights
to it, so why not release it. Most of them
wouldn't respond, but one awesomeness executive did in an email,
he said, there were no plans for Action number one
right now, Well, we kind of established that, but okay,
(39:37):
so we started thinking about why else films get shelved.
In many cases it comes down to rights issues. With
Action Number one, there are two potentially problematic elements at play.
The first is that comic. Now, any movie character can
talk about Superman all they like, or Madonna or Star Wars,
(39:59):
but showing it, the viewer gets fleeting glimpses of Action
Comics Number one in scenes from the movie, and that
comic and Superman himself are the intellectual property of Warner Brothers,
which owns DC Comics. His image belongs to them. So
could Warner have raised an issue? Alex doesn't think so.
(40:22):
It was the same thing because the props we use
were repros that DC at some point had put out. Obviously,
we're waving around real, insanely expensive crisis comics, but they
were real reprose of that we didn't make them, and
that again is what have allowed legal to let us
do it. If you show Superman and you're not trying
(40:42):
to make it off brand Superman movie, it should be
fine unless it's not. That's their fear, their deep fear
of being sued down the line. So in this case,
they're like, we have a great case to be made
of their use because we're using the actual thing. We're
not disparaging anything, so we can just kind of for it.
But maybe that was the issue, and the second complication
(41:05):
might be more relevant, that complication being Nicolas Cage. While
Cage did give his blessing, according to Alex, there are
other issues at play depending on how he gave that permission.
Cage could have had second thoughts, and could have had
second thoughts just as he was gearing up to play
himself in the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The idea
(41:28):
of two meta Nicolas Cage comedies may have started to
seem less appealing to the man who is now dealing
with multiple fictional versions of himself. We got a pretty
good sense of all this from David Heinrich. David is
an entertainment lawyer who deals with clearances or making sure
a movie or television production isn't shooting itself in the
(41:49):
foot by depicting a real person or someone else's intellectual property.
Here's David, so with a lot like this Warner Brothers
is tied to the DC universe. DC as an entity
on their own have their own stake in Superman an
Action number one, Nicolas Cage his personal estate, and then
(42:11):
any of the film companies that are working with him
currently and that need him to be a recognizable and
lovable name their marketing purposes. It's just the who's who
had any one of them should be a roadblock, and
several of them in conjunction. If there were several of
these issues altogether and I was representing Netflix or somebody,
(42:32):
my recommation were probably just to be like, not forget it,
Like it's probably not worth it. People in the public
eye have something known as publicity rights. It means that
taking someone like Cage and portraying them as, say, a
murderous psychopath in a movie could conceivably create some problems
for filmmakers that wouldn't exist with a non fiction article
(42:55):
or documentary or podcast. It also not a documentary, it's
not a nonfiction film. This is a fictionalized account. Um,
you have a broaderly way. The fact that Action Number
One was a modestly budgeted movie may have also played
a part. And if the movie is like a B
(43:17):
minus comedy. Right, if you're not going to be making
eight million, I don't know, I think we can, then
why do you want to have a six million dollar
legal fight? Because like when it comes to the accounting,
it doesn't matter if it's going to make more money
that it loses in court, like the opportunity cost on Well,
would the seven million we spent on legal fees be
(43:37):
better just getting Jason Momo to show up in the
next whatever, Right, So here's one possible outcome. Action number
one is written, shot and edited, and then Awesomeness goes
in search of a distributor, and the distributor realizes that
the cost of ensuring this movie, given the potential legal
(43:59):
exposure or depicting a fictional and violent cage and an
illustration of Superman, simply isn't worth the trouble. So if
the film comes out and Nicholas Cages like a madman
ordering hit squads to kill somebody over a comic book,
comedy is subjective, and accountants and legal teams are necessarily
(44:21):
pessimists who will always be thinking about the worst case scenario.
It's without like written sign off from Mr Cage saying yeah, no,
I'm totally fine with this. If it's going to be
decided by his authorized representatives, it's essentially our job to
err on the side of caution, and so if that's
what happens, it's it's reasonable to assume that they put
(44:43):
the brakes on. So why wouldn't Awesomeness figure all of
this out before shooting? It could be that they took
a shoot first, ask questions later approach. According to David,
it wouldn't be the first time a major production put
off clear into until the shooting was completed. Or it
could be Cage wanted his unbearably massive talent to not
(45:07):
have a competing meta project. One kind of fake Cage
like Marco is okay, but this one maybe not. A
couple of years ago, Alex finally managed to get a
copy of his movie. He may have held a super
exclusive online screening for a handful of friends just so
(45:30):
it could have some kind of audience. Every now and then,
I still try to nudge it along and see if
they can do something with a view of you know,
I've done a hypothetical underground streaming of it once on
Twitch for some people. It's one of those things I
think is fun and silly, and I think if people
have found it have been like, yeah, I'll watch this,
this is fun, instead of sitting on a drive on
some shelf like the lost Ark of the Covenant some
(45:52):
Culver City office. Alex likes the movie he made. He's
still in the dark about why other people can't see it,
and he's not her Cage has seen it either, but
he still has an idea for an end credit scene.
There was one we couldn't even get close to, although
I think we should have tried harder. I desperately wanted
there to be a button in the movie, and we
(46:12):
even left space for it in case it somehow came
together at the very very end as a credit sting
with one more knit Cage, And in my dream world,
I really wanted it to be Travolta as a face
off sort of thing at the end, and it just
didn't come together. But I think that was a bit fun.
So maybe we'll never see a dramatic reenactment of the
day Nicolas Cage found his comics missing, or a comedic
(46:35):
one for that matter. But as upset as Nicolas Cage
was when it happened, time seems to heal all comic
heist related wounds. There probably came a time when he
accepted that his copy of the comic was gone forever.
To write a movie scene where someone held the comic
aloft in their hand and announced to the world that
(46:56):
they had found it would seem unbelievable, except that's exactly
what happened. But before we get there, we need to
take a step back to where all of this began,
not with Cage, but with Superman and his creators, back
to a real crime that would leave a father day
(47:18):
and a son searching to make sense of it all
to understand what Nick Cage lost. We're going back to
where it all started, where the man of Steele's co
creator was robbed of his youth and changed pop culture forever.
That's next on Stealing Superman. Oh sorry, almost forgot to ask,
(47:39):
Alex I did not take the comic. Stealing Superman is
written by Jake Rawson, sound design, scoring and mixing by
Josh Fisher, additional sting by Jonathan Washington, original music by
(48:03):
Aaron Kaufman, mixing and mastering by Baheed Fraser. Research and
fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson, with production
support from Lulu Philip show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our
executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host Danish Sports.
If you're enjoying this show, check out Haileywood and Noble
(48:27):
Blood and give us a nice review. We'll see you
next week.
Nick Cage is in a Superman costume. It's not for Halloween,
and it's not just because he feels like it. It's
because in Cage is set to star in Superman Lives,
the first new live action Superman movie in ten years.
(00:25):
It's taken Warner Brothers, which owns DC Comics that long,
to find the right pairing of star and director to
bring one of their most valuable assets back to the screen.
Cage will star as the Man of Steel. Tim Burton,
who ushered in the modern era of comic book movies
in with Batman, will direct their Superman will be a
(00:48):
bit of an outcast, an alien from another planet who
doesn't quite fit in here, and everyone believes Cage is
perfect for the role. Cage looks great in the It's
crafted from rubber, like Michael Keaton's Batman costume, to give
more muscle definition to his already trim physique. His hair
(01:09):
is long and dyed black, reminiscent of Superman's mullet when
he came back from the dead in the comics. Back
In one version of the suit, led lights make it
light up like a screen at a rave. Cage looks
in the mirror and seems satisfied with what he sees.
He's always had an affinity for Superman, for someone who
(01:31):
tried to conduct himself with dignity and tried to act
with a moral compass. He just spent a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars on Action Comics number one, and it's
easy to think he did it in part to feel
a connection with the mythology. Cage has often spoken about
having talisman, physical objects that can help him get a
(01:52):
better feel for a role. What could get him in
tune with playing Superman more than possessing the cultural artifact
of where it all began. In fact, he bought two copies,
the one in terrific condition that was stolen and a
second one that wasn't quite as well preserved. Some collectors
call this an under copy. It's sort of like settling
(02:14):
for the comic you want in an average condition until
the holy Grail comes along. The under copy is the
one Cage sold off in his massive public auction in
two thousand and two. Here's William Hughes, who brokered the sale.
I thought that one was a restored copy, so it
might have just been one that he had all along.
(02:36):
And then he upgraded when he had the opportunity to
get the nice, high grade copy. That's a frequent occurrence
in the hobby where you know the higher end buyers,
they have a lasser copy and in the upgrade when
the opportunity arises. But there are bumpy times ahead. For
one thing, Cages stand in. A man named Marco Kyus
(02:59):
didn't have as much luck donning the iconic suit as
Cage did. I went in for a costume fitting. Unfortunately,
at that point I had gained a lot of weight,
probably twenty five pounds heavier than Nick, and I was
kind of bloated looking and said, I think during face
off around that time, and I went in for a
fitting and the costume were just staring at me and said,
(03:19):
are you like Alec Baldwin's standing that's Marco. I said no,
I'm in a cage is stand it. And he's like, oh,
how did you get that job? It's like you're really overweight.
I said, yeah, I know at the time you could
say these things, and I said, yeah, I know, I've
I've been getting a lot of weight on the film set.
That's when the costume designer had to get creative. The
(03:40):
funny part was they had to roll it up. The
rubber had to be rolled up over my fat and
then zip me up, so everything was kind of like
squished inside. It was so embarrassing. I was so out
of shape, and I was so unlikely to be Superman standing.
It would be a joke. It would be It would
be a farce. Farce is not a bad way to
(04:01):
describe Cage's Superman a movie project. The movie would soon
fall by the wayside, and Cage's best version of that comic,
which was procured to celebrate and fuel that role, would
be stolen. But you know all that. What you may
not know is this wouldn't be the only time Nicholas
(04:22):
Cage and Superman would be the subjects of a single
feature film. But instead of Cage playing Superman, someone would
be playing Cage, several actors actually, including a woman, and
the movie wouldn't be about Superman, but about the theft
of Cage's copy of Action Number One, a holy fictional,
(04:46):
very meta version of the story that was written by
two superstar Hollywood writers, filmed, edited, and never released. No
one's ever seen it. Even it's a rector couldn't get
a copy. The only thing more mysterious than the fate
of Cages Action number one is the fate of the
(05:08):
movie about Cages Action number one. Like that famous comic,
it disappeared without a trace. Today we're going to find
out why. For I Heart Radio, this is Stealing Superman.
(05:33):
I'm your host, Danis Schwartz, and this is episode five
now a major motion picture. The war that comes to
me is that it was a trip, you know, to
play someone named Nick Cage and two version as of
someone named Nick Cage. It was terrifying. I mean I
(05:54):
had to say that I was actually very nervous to
go towards this. But I believe that if you're a something,
if as long as doesn't hurt you or anybody else,
you should go towards it and you might learn something.
You've probably heard of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
It's a film that was released earlier this year and
(06:16):
started Nicolas Cage. As Nicolas Cage, the movie version of
Cage is at a crossroads in his career, much like
the real Cage, who fell off the Hollywood A list
about a decade ago and has been working steadily in
lower budget a fair The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which,
as fans of the whole brevity thing will call Massive Talent,
(06:39):
sees a fictionalized version of Cage having that same experience.
He's having an existential crisis and agrees to perform for
a drug dealer at the dealer's birthday party. Chaos ensues,
and so does a lot of tongue in cheek commentary
on Cage's career. He not only plays himself, but versions
(06:59):
of him, all at different times in his life. Face
Off Eric Cage, Wild at Heart Eric Cage. The movie
allowed Cage to seize control of his story back from
snarky Internet commenters who were very preoccupied with his grandiose
acting choices and some of his b movie roles. Critics
liked Massive Talent. It was quote smart, funny, and wildly creative,
(07:24):
according to one review, but it wasn't the first time
Cage had been approached to play himself in a movie.
The initial pitch was, we knew this thing had happened
where this copy of Action Comments number one went missing
from Cage's house, and like that was the starting premise,
and then the approach to it was like, well, what
(07:45):
if it was this sort of ocean's eleven style heist
by these sort of like friends who an't hanging around
a comic book shop where they find out he's got it,
and they consider themselves Oceans eleven and they're going to
break in and they're gonna get it and sell it
and get rich off of it, and they're all at
the that to Alex Fernie. Alex is a director primarily
of television comedies like Key and Peel and comedy Bang Bang.
(08:08):
A few years ago, a script landed on his desk.
It was titled Action Number One, and it was another
meta Cage story, but this one was about one very
specific incident in Cage's life, the theft of that rare
comic from his home, and then the approach to Cage
(08:30):
was obviously a very heightened version of him, where he
becomes this sort of like bad guy antagonist who's trying
to track them down and hires a hitman to kill
them because they stole his most beloved belonging. So it
really takes that first actual thing to happen, which memory
serves it was by large. He had a party and
the next day it was just gone, but he didn't
know how long it had been missing him. And turned
(08:52):
it into this sort of pisty thing where he's the
anti Garcia from Motions eleven. The script was written by
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Grant, a screenwriting team responsible
for some major hits like The Night at the Museum
franchise with Ben Stiller. You've probably seen them too. In
addition to being co creators with Carrie Kenny Silver, Lennon
(09:15):
Grant were actors on Reno nine, one, the cult hit
on Comedy Central about annept Nevada Cops. Lennon played Lieutenant
Jim Dangle, Grant was Deputy Travis Jr. When the two
heard about Cage's comic book heist, their story Antenna went
off a famous actor suffering an art theft. Only it
(09:37):
was a rare comic and not just any actor, but
Nicholas Cage, avowed Superman fan and someone once slated to
play him. That was a movie premise, so Lennon and
Grant concocted a fictionalized version of the story. They didn't
need to adhere to facts. Instead, they tell you who
(09:58):
the thieves are right out the game. The script is
from their point of view. It's a group of comic
book collectors who get wind of Cagees priceless comic collection
and the easy access to Action number one. Oh yeah
yeah the second Ben and Tom mentioned me as like,
I absolutely know that story because it is so nuts,
and I feel like around that same time, when people
(10:19):
were like passing around the test footage of him a
superman and stuff, that was all a lot of discussion
of him and his comic books and stuff would come up,
and then this story was like so perfectly right down
the middle of that perception of him that I very
much remember it. I think part of what makes it
so interesting, beyond sort of the meanness of Nick Cage,
(10:44):
is that I think Cage is a incredibly sincere person
in a time when that is kind of rare. He
likes his things, he likes his weird cripts, he likes
his comic books. That's who he is and that's what
he likes. That feels more relatable than if it was
like someone stole a two hundred thousand dollar car from
(11:04):
Matt Damon. That wouldn't be interesting. But this is because
it's so specific both the man and his interests that
it just feels like another world right, Like it feels
like fiction it's not quite Ocean's Eleven. The thieves are
inept and kind of bumbling. The Cage of the movie
(11:25):
is well, he's even more bombastic than the parodies of
Cage floating around out There. He hires a hit woman
to find and assassinate his comic thieves while the team
tries to ransom the book back to Cage. Lennon and
Grant were working on the project as far back as
at the time. They hoped Nicholas Cage would agree to
(11:46):
play himself a very exaggerated, very murdering version of himself,
and Cage thought about it. He danced around the project
wondering if parodying his out there persona was a good
idea or not. When I came on board. Basically, they
had spent a while chasing Cage trying to get to
do it, and he was thinking about and kind of
(12:07):
like going back and forth. This really isn't as ludicrous
as it may sound. A while back, there was a
script floating around titled Chad Schmidt, about a struggling actor
who bears an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt. Chad is
forced to watch as his doppelganger, who is portrayed as
a buffoon trips into fame while poor Chad is relegated
(12:31):
to never was status. Brad Pitt was interested in playing
Chad Schmidt, as well as the script's doof as version
of himself, but when they couldn't settle on a director,
it fell by the wayside. Still being John Malkovich, playing
yourself can work, but not for Cage. After circling action
(12:52):
number one, he decided he didn't want to play an
exaggerated version. For a minute, there was talk of Jason
Statham being involved. Whether he was going to play Cage
or one of the thieves was unclear, but that also
wound up not happening. That left the production with no
choice but to get inventive. By this point it was
(13:13):
under the banner of Awesomeness Entertainment, a production company that
since had phenomenal success with the Netflix franchise To All
the Boys I've Loved Before. Awesomeness recruited Fernie to direct
the script. All they needed to do was cast someone
to be Nicholas Cage, but that's not easy to do,
(13:34):
so I rewrote My rain Partners a little bit, and
then it kind of came on at that point to
direct it and to kind of figure out what we
going to do about the fact that this movie about
Nick Cage isn't going to have Nick Cage in it.
So if Cage didn't want to be Cage and no
other actor could step into his shoes, the filmmakers had
(13:55):
to devise another solution, and it would be an odd
acious one. There've been all this talk about like should
we just never see Cage? Should it be like a
Charlie's Angels thing, whereas only ever a voice on a thing,
you always see him from behind stuff. And I didn't
want to do that at all because that felt to
me like a cheap or like that felt like that
would be obvious that we couldn't do the thing that
(14:17):
we wanted to do, which was a Nick Cage. And
so then I was like, well, if it's weirder and
if it's purposeful and we see these scenes where Nick
Cage does show up but it's always a different actor,
that's something we can kind of lean into. The Responsibility
of playing Cage wouldn't fall on one person's shoulders. Four
of them could share the unbearable weight. It was also
(14:41):
a decision that broadcasts the film's intentions. This wasn't going
to be a gritty true crime tale. It was going
to be light on its feet, fun and hopefully funny.
If we've got the other way, I think we would
have pulled out of most of his scenes and just
had there be some sort of standing for him, who
isn't him, who works for him or someth thing. But
because we did that, we only kind of worked these
(15:02):
scenes in, and then that kind of impacted when Cage
shows up in the script, because we wanted to kind
of space out these different comedy folks who play him
coming in. But it also gave us ability to have
the fictional Nick Cage character show up throughout in a
way that didn't feel like, yeah, they're really avoiding the
fact that the person the movie is about isn't in
(15:23):
the movie. According to Alex, Cage was okay with this plan.
He decided he didn't want to do it, but gave
his blessing to play the role of Cage. Producers cast
for people that actors who play him are Rob Hubil
and Missy Pyle and the Uncle and Rob Cordrey. The
actors would play Cage in different scenes when the script
called for Cage to make an appearance to play the
(15:46):
comic book Thieves. Jimmy Tetro, Mike Castle, and Haley Magnus
were cast. Tetro is probably best known now for his
role on the ABC sitcom Home Economics. In the movie,
Tetro's character, Brian In is a stereo installer who gets
into cages home and notices the action number one. He
(16:07):
convinces his friends to break in and grab the comic,
which is just sitting on a coffee table. Alex started
shooting the movie in Vancouver in the fall of and no,
Vancouver wasn't intended to be a stand in for Los Angeles.
(16:27):
That was where the production could get the most out
of its budget, So Cage the movie Cage had to relocate.
It was literally based on where we were able to
because it would have made sense to do New Orleans
the tax cuts, where we're like, okay, make it work
in Seattle or Vancouver. You can shoot in Vancouver. It's like, Okay,
it's never going to really make sense, but we can
(16:47):
just claim that he has a house here and we
just go from there. And it mostly went off without
a hitch. The leads had good chemistry. The script was funny,
and the conceit of Cage being played by different performers
was definitely going to get the movie some attention. But
it was important that while the movie would have fun
with Cage, it wouldn't make fun of Cage. Yeah, there
(17:10):
was that, and there was like right before we started
shooting too, there's a bunch of cold feat that like
this was too weird. And then I think once we
did it it where it talls like, oh, this is fun,
And I think that's the most fun stuff in the
movie because everyone knows that, everyone knows his thing and
it's great and everyone likes it, and I think that's
more fun, like more like I guess, celebratory. When the
Cage actors would come on set, Alex explained that he
(17:33):
wasn't looking for a Cage impression, more of a Cage essence.
All of the actors who played him, every one of
them was afraid of it when I first approached them
to do it, because it is such a weird ask
you when come to Vancouver for like a day and
play Nick Cage, and every one of them I had
to kind of walk through, like we're not looking for
a very authentic, accurate impression when I have been look
(17:56):
for impression and all we just want people to kind
of play what you think his ibe is, what his
energy is, in whatever way that means to you. And
all four of them are recognizably Nick Cage, but do
it in very different ways, which I think is very cool.
But they were all at first kind of like what
what is what is this? Like I'm not an impression
this to be, Like no, no, you don't have to be,
(18:17):
especially when it's like Missy Pyle coming up being like
you brought me up to play this man for this
one scene, like yeah, okay, I'll talk you through it.
And then everyone got it and they were all very fun.
After shooting, Fernie edited the film. It was scored in
today's streaming landscape, it didn't seem like there would be
much of an issue finding a home. They all needed content,
(18:39):
especially during a pending pandemic when productions were being shut
down left and right. And then we kind of wrapped
up the post. I had hoped for some reshoots and
some other stuff that ended up falling apart. We probably
should have been the first time, but it right at
the end of that there was a conversation I had
had with some of the Awesomeness people, and they were
excited about it, and they're talking a where they're going
to do it. And then I never talked to people
(19:00):
a get because they all left the company, and I
don't think I ever had another conversation with someone at
the Dust Company. Again, it's like we sent it in
not even really acknowledgement of it, and then it just
like literally disappeared. And it went from being like, this
is really fun, we'll get this out there, We've got
some plans, we'll keep talking about it too, we're all quitting,
we're all going to start our own companies, and then
(19:20):
just dead silence for at this point now five years.
It's not as though Cage had ever had particularly good
luck with Superman movies. At the height of his box
office stature in the late nine nineties, he agreed to
play Superman, his first ever superhero role. He had and
(19:44):
would be connected to other comic book projects like Constantine,
which eventually went to Keanu Reeves. For the record, It's
pronounced Constantine in the comics and Hard Boiled, a pulp
comic written by comics legend Frank Miller, but Superman was
the Big One, a beautiful freak, Cage said of the character.
(20:05):
When Cage accepted the role in he was about to
kick off an incredible run of action movie hits Conner
Face Off the Rock. Those three movies combined made over
half a billion dollars. He had transformed himself from an
eccentric character actor who ate live cockroaches and vampire's kiss
(20:27):
to a more refined version of Sylvester Stallone and Don't
Forget This Superman was also an Oscar winner for leaving
Las Vegas. Cage's run in the nineties was something to
witness firsthand. It was an opportunity afforded to a select
group of people. One of them was Marco Kiras, Cage's
(20:48):
tenured stand in. Not a stunt devil. Marco doesn't do
any jumping. You can't set Marco on fire. But when
you need someone who looks like Cage to stand in
Cage's place while the lighting is being set up, that's
how you've called. For years. Marco had often been told
he looked a lot like Cage. Yes, yeah, often, but
(21:09):
different people, they said, Cage and Alec Baldin. Depends on
how heavy I was getting. Joe Montagna Cage. You know,
it just depended on my look, my attire. But Marco
didn't really want the job at first. After being in
Los Angeles for a few years and doing the waiter thing,
sure he recognized an opportunity. It was a chance to
(21:29):
double for Cage in the heist comedy Trapped in Paradise.
But the gig was in the winter in Toronto, the
coldest winter in years, and so I said no. I said,
thank you so much. I've never done the job, but
I decline, and they all got piste off at me
because it was the perfect fit for the Cage, and
they convinced me to do the job. So I actually
(21:51):
then took the job. He came with perks right off
the top. I didn't know any different, to tell you
the truth, but that's where it all happened. So I
was a real needed fit. I had all the union work,
and I had film experience, but not standing experience. So
to me it was a bit of a degrading position.
But I realized it was a really necessary position. So
(22:12):
when I started to work in this film, within a month,
he was very interested in me, and he thought I
was very good, and basically I followed the rules and
I did the right stuff, and he asked me to
go on tour with him as a standard, and I did.
I had nothing else going on in life. It was
very unique to be in a position where Nick Cage
was the biggest star in the world and I was
the biggest star standing in the world, and I didn't
(22:36):
really know it or appreciate it because we are working
so many films and in so many locations that our
hands were just constantly in the work. Whatever Marco might
have felt about the job before, it turned out to
be a pretty good deal. There were perks. Cage didn't
just buy stuff for himself, he bought stuff for everyone
(22:56):
around him. Yeah, it was. It was definitely travel because
obviously I did all those films and traveled, and they
put you up to the hotels to give you a
rent a car, to give you per deems on a contract.
It was a real perky package. A lot of gifts
from Cage. That guy showers you with gifts. The guy
is the biggest giver I had ever met in my life,
(23:19):
let alone in Hollywood. Oh my god. Everything anything from
designers suits to jackets to luggage to expensive bottles of wine.
And Scotch and right down to a Rolex watch. I
mean just endless gifts, just gives you never expect in
your lifetime in the position that I had, and it
wasn't only me, it was everybody, So we all benefited
(23:40):
because of his generosity. He's just a person who's beyond thankful.
So Cage and Marco was in a prime position in
the nineties as Warner Brothers was gearing up to make
a new Superman movie. The studio hadn't made one since
Superman four, The Quest for Peace, in which was Christopher
(24:02):
Reeve's last outing as the character. Since then, it had
been a parade of scripts and pitches, which ranged from
Superman rescuing the tiny bottle city of Candor to fighting Brainiac,
one of his most famous comic book villains. There was
even a brief announcement of a Superman five starring Reeve,
(24:23):
but it never got beyond the talking stages. Reeve suffered
from a catastrophic horse riding accident in that left him
paralyzed from the neck down. Warner had been focused on
their Batman franchise, which had been ushered to the screen
by a producer and Batman super fan named Michael Uslan.
(24:44):
He steered the production away from ideas like Bill Murray
as Batman and straight to Tim Burton. Burton had developed
a reputation for making movies about outcasts, like Beetlejuice and
Peewee's Big Adventure. Burton made Batman a huge hit nine,
and then he made a sequel in Batman Returns. A
(25:06):
third Batman movie, Batman Forever, was released in without Burton.
Warner obviously saw potential in their comic book Slate. The
next move was to bring back Superman. Now the Man
of Steel had been popping up. There was a syndicated
(25:26):
Superboy series in the early nine nineties which was devoted
to the character's college life. There was also Lewis and
Clark The New Adventures of Superman, an ABC hit about
a more domestic Clark Kent that starred Dean Kane and
Terry Hatcher. But Warner had always been apprehensive about investing
a lot of money on a major new Superman movie.
(25:50):
You had to treat Superman with kid gloves. He was
more than just the first superhero. He was, in their eyes,
a commodity, and at the time, putting someone in tights
with sincerity was always caused for concern. Even Batman went
from a gritty Michael Keaton to Val Kilmer joking about
(26:12):
taking the Batmobile to drive throughs. Was anyone going to
buy the big Blue Boy Scout in the grunge era?
The involvement of Tim Burton and Nicholas Cage seemed to
convince them. Burton had imagined Batman as a dark hero,
absolving the character from the pop art incarnation of the
nineties sixties Adam West television series. If he could do
(26:35):
it for Batman, who was much maligned by then, he
could certainly do it for Superman. Burton was the director
Cage wanted. They agreed that Superman would be an outsider,
an element that hadn't really been explored on film. How
would you feel if you were the most powerful being
on the planet? Would you feel emboldened or ostracized? Age
(27:00):
was excited by this. He felt Superman was a way
of telling kids it was okay to be different. He
felt like a character this big and this well known
had a direct line to children, and he wanted a
positive message to be delivered to them. He invited Burton
over to his house for a brainstorming session while a
(27:20):
screenwriter named Wesley Strike took copious notes. Cage liked talking
about it. The word was you know, he really wanted
to do it. It was a different take on Superman.
He did ask me if I met the director, I
find you Tim Burton, And to my surprise, he didn't
know Tim Burton because he's also from Los Angeles. And
I said, yes, I've met him and I've worked with him.
(27:41):
I said, you're gonna love this guy. He's just brilliant. Well,
it would be something different, it would still be a
major blockbuster. In Superman lives, Superman would have to deal
with both Lex Luthor and Brainiac, who developed a relentless
monster named Doomsday that can match the heroes Braun. After
(28:02):
seemingly dying, Superman is resurrected and goes on to conquer
his enemies and hopefully the box office. There would be
happy Meal, toys and sequels, and maybe even a team
up with Batman. Cage wasn't the only big attraction either.
Burton wanted Jim Carey to play Brainiac, Sandra Bullock was
(28:22):
considered for Lois Lane, and Chris Rock was cast as
Jimmy Olsen. So Werner began writing checks a lot of checks.
Millions were spent on sets, on script ory rights, on costuming.
Location experts started scouting Pittsburgh to stand in from Metropolis.
(28:42):
Cage threw himself into the role. For one thing, he
bought a copy of Action Comics Number one, maybe to
have a physical connection with the history of the character.
It was one thing to steep yourself in comic book
mythology and another to become a part of it. But
that's what he was doing, becoming a new version of
(29:04):
a hero he had long admired. It was an intriguing
blend of Americana and cages surrealist approach to acting. Who
wouldn't want to see this film? Then it was time
for Cage to go in for a costume fitting. So
did his body devil Marco Kiris. We know what happened,
(29:24):
but Marco says he would have lost weight. Yeah, I
would have lost the weight. The footage is out there online.
You can probably find it, though of course we can't
indorse the unauthorized distribution of such material. But when you
see it, you immediately notice how wonder struck Cages by
being in the iconic costume. It's a little stiff. All
(29:48):
this molded rubber, and it needs professional cinematography, not the
camcorder someone is using to record the fitting. But how
the costume looks isn't really what's important. Cage is looking
at himself in a mirror, as though a boyhood dream
were coming true. He had come so far from childhood
(30:09):
when he once dressed as Batman for Halloween, but then
lost the cape, so he had to use a green
plaid blanket instead. You can imagine that little boy not
quite believing what's happening now, But that sense of wonder
couldn't last. Burton and Cage worked on the Superman movie
(30:30):
for roughly a year. The first sign of trouble came
when Warner realized Cage it was due to start shooting
a film called Snake Eyes for director Brian de Palma
in October. The start of that film overlapped with the
shooting schedule for Superman Lives, which turned into a territorial
(30:51):
tug of war for Cages services. Neither studio wanted to
back down, both believed they had the right to retain Cage.
When that was resolved, Superman Lives appeared ready for takeoff,
but as they often did, executives at Warner brothers started
to second guess their decision. Was Burton really the right
(31:14):
person to reinvent Superman. His esthetic worked beautifully for Batman,
who fit perfectly into Burton's dark and gothic visions, but
Superman was something else, entirely a bright, optimistic hero. They
started to worry Superman was about to get weird and expensive,
(31:36):
and Cage didn't exactly convince them otherwise. He wanted to
play Superman as an outcast, a lost soul. Calling him
a beautiful freak probably didn't make the Happy Meal people
too confident. Warner had to make a decision and quickly.
In the end, they decided to pull the plug on
(31:58):
Burton and Cage. A Warner executive named Bill Gerber had
to call Cages manager Jerry Harrington. The executive said it
was one of the most uncomfortable calls he had ever
had to make in the business. Superman lives was dead.
The only footage of Nicholas Cage as Superman would be
(32:19):
some costume tests shot on VHS. According to Marco, Cage
was devastated. I think it would have been great. I
think it was very disappointed that it didn't happen. I
think It's one of the things that he wanted to
do forever, and now he can't come back to because
he's a different age group and you know it's not
gonna work. Marco worked with Cage for a few more
(32:41):
years and then the two had a bit of a
falling out. Marco isn't too eager to discuss details, but
something happened in South Africa where Cage was shooting a film.
Some events happened while we were in South Africa, and
when we got back, he had already dismissed a couple
of key entourage members, and when we got back, three
(33:04):
or four of us were then let go at the
same time. So nobody really knows exactly what happened because
it wasn't mentioned. It was only mentioned through his producer.
And it was a bitter moment than it just ended.
Not that we weren't tired and everybody was working and
overworked at this time, but it was kind of like
a blow to us that it all just kind of
(33:24):
ended with one phone call, and not just for me,
but for a few of us. Just one other thing, Marco,
did you no, no, no, I've never seen the comics
other than what was reported on the news or a
picture of them somewhere. I've never actually seen them, but
that's a that's a good spinner. Marco isn't sure who's
(33:45):
responsible for taking the books, but he thinks it's certainly
conceivable it was an inside job, and the idea of
that bums him out. Because Cage was a good boss.
They don't understand his generosity, they don't understand his commitment
to the people who work for him. So if anybody
steals from him, it's just you've crippled him. It's like
a little child. Why would you steal from somebody who
(34:06):
gives you so much. Marco left the film industry and
went into real estate, where he's done well. Cage, meanwhile,
wouldn't get a chance to play a comic book character
until two thousand seven, when he started as Johnny Blaze
in ghost Writer. There was one upside, though. Cage's Superman
deal was reported to be pay or play, meaning he
(34:28):
got paid even if the movie never got made. He
took home four million dollars all for trying on a suit.
At least he could buy some more comics. Burton got
paid too, so did the countless screenwriters who'd been working
on the movie since Warner had sunk tens of millions
(34:49):
into a new Superman film and had nothing to show
for it. So maybe a movie not about Superman but
about Cage being a fan of Superman would be different, right.
Alex Fernie shot the action number one movie in the
(35:11):
fall of and had it pretty much done in and
while it probably wasn't due for a major theatrical rollout,
he was pretty sure it would wind up in his
Netflix queue. That had been kind of my impression. What
had been told to me was the idea was Awesomeness
the production company, I think, a good relationship like Netflix
(35:33):
and some other place, and be like, we'll probably gonna
make this for streaming. We'll see if there's a distributor
wants to do it, and maybe we'll do like some
festivals and then go to streaming, which is great, slow
budget thing. I actual think it could have found a
home there. People could have discovered it, but as the
months went by, no one at Awesomeness was reaching out
to offer a production update. Fernie asked about it but
never got a response. It was not very awesome. Literally,
(35:57):
no one knows or has any good answers. They just
kind of like went away because we tried to be like, well,
I bet we could get some fun like festivals to
do it feels like it would be fun for that.
Couldn't get that to happen. My guests as to what happened,
and this is one conjecture on my part, is around
(36:18):
that time Awesomeness also started. I feel like they kind
of like focused in on a certain demographic and a
certain approach that this movie didn't fit with, and they
didn't know what to do with it, so they just
kind of put it away. That's my best guess. Okay,
that kind of makes sense. Awesomeness moved in a different direction,
But that doesn't explain that for years Fernie couldn't even
(36:40):
get a copy of his own film from the company.
They seemed reluctant to acknowledge it even existed. I couldn't
even get a copy of it for myself to see,
which was insane. That's with like executive producers trying to
get it, that they couldn't get it. We probably shouldn't
say if we were among those who caught a screen
of this elusive movie, but if we were, hypothetically we
(37:04):
suppose it might involve Cage being very irate that his
copy of Action Comics Number one has been stolen, and
unlike the real Cage, who was upset but somewhat resigned
to his fate, this version of Cage decides to enlist
the services of an assassin to hunt down the thieves.
(37:26):
The movie, Cage appears in a few scenes. As we discussed,
every time he shows up, he's played by a different actor.
There's no in movie explanation for this. It's kind of
like that Bob Dylan movie where Dylan was played by
everyone from Cate Blanchette to Christian Bale. It's a little
surrealist as a nod to the very surrealist actor they're portraying.
(37:50):
The movie culminates in a showdown at a comic convention,
and even though the film isn't circulating, it still feels
in poor form to spoil it, so we'll just say
it's well, it's fine. It's not an affront to humanity.
It's a modestly budgeted movie that dips along. That's what's
(38:10):
so weird is there's no one in it who has
become problematic sense, and you would think that there would
be places it could go to at least make them
some money, but they would rather spare it. And again, also,
I know this sounds like it's like, oh, it's probably
so bad that they're bearing, because that's what I would assume.
I don't think it's perfect and I don't think I
(38:31):
hit a home run on it, but I think it,
by and large works, and that's one of the things
that surprises me is that it just disappeared. So we
reached out to Peter Principato, the owner of Artists First,
the management and production company that represents Alex along with
the writers Thomas Lennon and Robert ben Grant. Artists First
(38:52):
also helped produce the movie. Peter told us in an
email that he simply doesn't know that he wishes he
could answer of the question. He went on to say
that Awesomeness controls the movie and there's been some executive
turnover and as a result, the release of the film
has gotten completely lost. So we went to Awesomeness. We
(39:14):
reached out to a number of executives. The question was
pretty straightforward. You made a movie and own the rights
to it, so why not release it. Most of them
wouldn't respond, but one awesomeness executive did in an email,
he said, there were no plans for Action number one
right now, Well, we kind of established that, but okay,
(39:37):
so we started thinking about why else films get shelved.
In many cases it comes down to rights issues. With
Action Number one, there are two potentially problematic elements at play.
The first is that comic. Now, any movie character can
talk about Superman all they like, or Madonna or Star Wars,
(39:59):
but showing it, the viewer gets fleeting glimpses of Action
Comics Number one in scenes from the movie, and that
comic and Superman himself are the intellectual property of Warner Brothers,
which owns DC Comics. His image belongs to them. So
could Warner have raised an issue? Alex doesn't think so.
(40:22):
It was the same thing because the props we use
were repros that DC at some point had put out. Obviously,
we're waving around real, insanely expensive crisis comics, but they
were real reprose of that we didn't make them, and
that again is what have allowed legal to let us
do it. If you show Superman and you're not trying
(40:42):
to make it off brand Superman movie, it should be
fine unless it's not. That's their fear, their deep fear
of being sued down the line. So in this case,
they're like, we have a great case to be made
of their use because we're using the actual thing. We're
not disparaging anything, so we can just kind of for it.
But maybe that was the issue, and the second complication
(41:05):
might be more relevant, that complication being Nicolas Cage. While
Cage did give his blessing, according to Alex, there are
other issues at play depending on how he gave that permission.
Cage could have had second thoughts, and could have had
second thoughts just as he was gearing up to play
himself in the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The idea
(41:28):
of two meta Nicolas Cage comedies may have started to
seem less appealing to the man who is now dealing
with multiple fictional versions of himself. We got a pretty
good sense of all this from David Heinrich. David is
an entertainment lawyer who deals with clearances or making sure
a movie or television production isn't shooting itself in the
(41:49):
foot by depicting a real person or someone else's intellectual property.
Here's David, so with a lot like this Warner Brothers
is tied to the DC universe. DC as an entity
on their own have their own stake in Superman an
Action number one, Nicolas Cage his personal estate, and then
(42:11):
any of the film companies that are working with him
currently and that need him to be a recognizable and
lovable name their marketing purposes. It's just the who's who
had any one of them should be a roadblock, and
several of them in conjunction. If there were several of
these issues altogether and I was representing Netflix or somebody,
(42:32):
my recommation were probably just to be like, not forget it,
Like it's probably not worth it. People in the public
eye have something known as publicity rights. It means that
taking someone like Cage and portraying them as, say, a
murderous psychopath in a movie could conceivably create some problems
for filmmakers that wouldn't exist with a non fiction article
(42:55):
or documentary or podcast. It also not a documentary, it's
not a nonfiction film. This is a fictionalized account. Um,
you have a broaderly way. The fact that Action Number
One was a modestly budgeted movie may have also played
a part. And if the movie is like a B
(43:17):
minus comedy. Right, if you're not going to be making
eight million, I don't know, I think we can, then
why do you want to have a six million dollar
legal fight? Because like when it comes to the accounting,
it doesn't matter if it's going to make more money
that it loses in court, like the opportunity cost on Well,
would the seven million we spent on legal fees be
(43:37):
better just getting Jason Momo to show up in the
next whatever, Right, So here's one possible outcome. Action number
one is written, shot and edited, and then Awesomeness goes
in search of a distributor, and the distributor realizes that
the cost of ensuring this movie, given the potential legal
(43:59):
exposure or depicting a fictional and violent cage and an
illustration of Superman, simply isn't worth the trouble. So if
the film comes out and Nicholas Cages like a madman
ordering hit squads to kill somebody over a comic book,
comedy is subjective, and accountants and legal teams are necessarily
(44:21):
pessimists who will always be thinking about the worst case scenario.
It's without like written sign off from Mr Cage saying yeah, no,
I'm totally fine with this. If it's going to be
decided by his authorized representatives, it's essentially our job to
err on the side of caution, and so if that's
what happens, it's it's reasonable to assume that they put
(44:43):
the brakes on. So why wouldn't Awesomeness figure all of
this out before shooting? It could be that they took
a shoot first, ask questions later approach. According to David,
it wouldn't be the first time a major production put
off clear into until the shooting was completed. Or it
could be Cage wanted his unbearably massive talent to not
(45:07):
have a competing meta project. One kind of fake Cage
like Marco is okay, but this one maybe not. A
couple of years ago, Alex finally managed to get a
copy of his movie. He may have held a super
exclusive online screening for a handful of friends just so
(45:30):
it could have some kind of audience. Every now and then,
I still try to nudge it along and see if
they can do something with a view of you know,
I've done a hypothetical underground streaming of it once on
Twitch for some people. It's one of those things I
think is fun and silly, and I think if people
have found it have been like, yeah, I'll watch this,
this is fun, instead of sitting on a drive on
some shelf like the lost Ark of the Covenant some
(45:52):
Culver City office. Alex likes the movie he made. He's
still in the dark about why other people can't see it,
and he's not her Cage has seen it either, but
he still has an idea for an end credit scene.
There was one we couldn't even get close to, although
I think we should have tried harder. I desperately wanted
there to be a button in the movie, and we
(46:12):
even left space for it in case it somehow came
together at the very very end as a credit sting
with one more knit Cage, And in my dream world,
I really wanted it to be Travolta as a face
off sort of thing at the end, and it just
didn't come together. But I think that was a bit fun.
So maybe we'll never see a dramatic reenactment of the
day Nicolas Cage found his comics missing, or a comedic
(46:35):
one for that matter. But as upset as Nicolas Cage
was when it happened, time seems to heal all comic
heist related wounds. There probably came a time when he
accepted that his copy of the comic was gone forever.
To write a movie scene where someone held the comic
aloft in their hand and announced to the world that
(46:56):
they had found it would seem unbelievable, except that's exactly
what happened. But before we get there, we need to
take a step back to where all of this began,
not with Cage, but with Superman and his creators, back
to a real crime that would leave a father day
(47:18):
and a son searching to make sense of it all
to understand what Nick Cage lost. We're going back to
where it all started, where the man of Steele's co
creator was robbed of his youth and changed pop culture forever.
That's next on Stealing Superman. Oh sorry, almost forgot to ask,
(47:39):
Alex I did not take the comic. Stealing Superman is
written by Jake Rawson, sound design, scoring and mixing by
Josh Fisher, additional sting by Jonathan Washington, original music by
(48:03):
Aaron Kaufman, mixing and mastering by Baheed Fraser. Research and
fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson, with production
support from Lulu Philip show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our
executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host Danish Sports.
If you're enjoying this show, check out Haileywood and Noble
(48:27):
Blood and give us a nice review. We'll see you
next week.
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