60 Minutes - 04/23/2023: Healing and Hope, Who is Ray Epps?, Nicolas Cage

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

After catastrophic earthquakes devastated war-torn northwest Syria in February, Scott Pelley travels to the battleground to meet an American medical charity and volunteers for the White Helmets who braved the odds. Pelley speaks with healthcare workers, survivors and first responders about the earthquakes and the constant attacks on healthcare ordered by Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad and his ally, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Bill Whitaker meets with Ray Epps and his wife Robyn. Epps is notorious among consumers of right-wing media as the man who initiated the January 6th attack to undermine President Trump. The convoluted theory posits Epps was a secret agent of the "deep state,” and it has been promoted by members of Congress. Death threats and harassment forced Epps and his wife Robyn to sell their Arizona ranch and go into hiding. So who is Ray Epps? Actor Nicolas Cage invites 60 MINUTES into his eclectic Las Vegas home to meet his African crow Huginn and discuss his over 40 years of making movies, including his latest role as Count Dracula in Renfield. Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with Cage about his love of cinema, his wide-ranging catalog of inspiration and the ups and downs along the way. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How many surgeries did you do? So I did 23 on my first day. I remember crying myself to sleep the first night because it was just, the suffering was just so overwhelming. 60 Minutes visited the war zone in northwest Syria to see how American volunteers are treating survivors of February's cataclysmic earthquakes. These nurses and doctors are the bravest people I've ever met. We are going to the Capitol. Who is Ray Epps? A former member of the Oath Keepers who served in the Marine Corps and was an ardent Trump supporter, or at least he was until conservative media post-January 6th began insinuating that he was a government plant for the deep state. What exactly was the role of Ray Epps in the chaos of January 6th? No matter how many times they push this conspiracy theory, this lie,

it'll never become truth. Have you driven this out here beyond the gates? Oh, yeah. It's fun. It's fun. Snap, crackle, pop, right? Nicholas Cage has been working in Hollywood for more than 40 years,

won an Academy Award, and has played a kaleidoscope of characters. Let me know how those come out. I had it all thought out. Giddy up, you know, like he's getting himself up out of the mud shot. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson shot. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month.

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After February's cataclysmic series of earthquakes, the world poured emergency relief into Turkey and Syria. But some of those suffering the most were nearly impossible to reach. They were already fighting to survive a war zone. Recently, we traveled to this battleground in northwest Syria to meet an American medical charity that braved the odds, bringing hands of healing and hope. In the night, February 6th, death seemed a certainty. And life, a revelation. Through northwest Syria, 10,000 buildings crumbled.

In towns that stood for millennia, the catastrophe was biblical. But rescue did not assure survival. Ambulances raced to a medical system in critical condition itself after 12 years of bombed hospitals and murdered doctors. There's a chilling saying I learned in Syria that if you kill one doctor, it's like killing 100 soldiers. Because if you kill a doctor, you kill a nurse, you kill a paramedic, you blow up an ambulance, you destroy a hospital,

you're not just killing those individuals or group of individuals, you're taking away hope from a community. Samer Attar is an orthopedic surgeon from Chicago who volunteers for the Syrian American Medical Society, a U.S. charity that operates 13 hospitals in the war zone with a Syrian staff of 2,300. So when the war broke out in Syria,

health care providers, the health care infrastructure came under attack because war crimes work. Crimes against humanity work. If you can get away with it, you can win. He's talking about relentless attacks on health care ordered by Syria's Bashar al-Assad and his ally, Russia's Vladimir Putin, who sent his military to Syria in a prelude to Ukraine. The war began in 2011 with an uprising to end the Assad family's 52-year dictatorship. But Assad responded by leveling his country with artillery, chemical weapons, and explosive barrels dropped from planes. Fourteen million have lost their homes.

Half a million are dead. Northwest Syria is in rebel hands, and this is where we met the Syrian American Medical Society, known as SAMS. How many surgeries did you do? So I did 23 on my first day. I remember crying myself to sleep the first night because it was just, the suffering was just so overwhelming. But this is much bigger than... We had met Sam Rattar six years earlier, where Sam's was building a hospital in a cave to shield it from attack.

Today, the hospital is complete and proved its endurance in the quakes. Amini Jaqulan is a SAMS nurse in the black and white hijab headscarf. I was shocked at the scene, she told us. Bodies were scattered on the floor and there were so many. I couldn't have imagined the extent of destruction and the number of victims. The number in northwest Syria was 4,500 dead. In the cave hospital, the lost were laid in hallways, where a quick examination could change a life forever. And disbelief suspended sorrow, if only for a moment.

I remember a 22-year-old that got engaged the day before the earthquake, and the next day his whole family was gone. I remember a 16-year-old who was paralyzed from the neck down, and her family was gone. And she's on a mechanical ventilator in a hospital in Syria. Who's going to take care of her? And two orphaned teenage sisters, both with wounds in both legs, requiring multiple surgeries, and our four-year-old kid with a traumatic brain injury on a ventilator. These nurses and doctors are the bravest people I've ever met.

They were already traumatized by barrel bombs and chemical weapons, but when they talk about the earthquake, I had never really seen so much fear and panic and anxiety. We found those emotions in the story of a woman rescued from this collapsed apartment building. 35-year-old Zainab Ali Al-Najib arrived at the cave hospital to tell Amani Jeline a story she could hardly believe. I remember a woman who came to me to say that all of her children were dead. Rescue workers were digging for the woman's six children. We arrived at the collapsed building and heard a noise. We tried to reach the sound quickly, but our equipment and capabilities were limited.

The rescuers included Abdo Tariq and Sama Fakhoury, volunteers for the White Helmets, a force of 3,000 civil defense workers formed nine years ago to save victims from Assad's attacks. Fakhoury told us the girl was the first one we reached by digging through the roof. Two kids were behind her. I went down to her and cleared the debris from her hands and feet, and after an hour and a half, we were able to pull her out. The surviving children were rushed to the cave hospital, including 8-year-old Mohamed

and 6-year-old Safa. After about 15 minutes, Jacqueline told us, a girl arrived, followed by another girl. There were three of them. Three surviving children of six. We found them with their mother, Zainab. When your surviving children came in, it must have seemed like a miracle to you. Imagine thinking you've lost all of your kids, that everyone is gone, and then some of them are returned to you. She told us that she had to leave one child in surgery so she could attend the funeral of another. I try to talk to them, but nobody answers me.

The silence is unbearable. I miss seeing them and hearing their laughter. If only I could meet them for just an hour. I pray that God reunites us as soon as possible. They must miss us as much as we miss them. I hope to see them soon in heaven. Her tent stands where her apartment fell. In northwest Syria, the quakes left 53,000 families with nowhere to go,

expanding the war's aging camps of the homeless. What are their needs? What do they not need? I mean, look at this. Food security is one thing. Mufud El Hamadi is a Chicago oncologist and former president of the Syrian American Medical Society. He told us Sam spends $28 million a year in Syria. About $10 million of that is contributed by U.S. foreign aid.

What is your hope for Syria's future? I hope that they can find hope, that they will be able to believe in the future. They feel so much left behind and the world have forgotten about him. I wish I can feel again that there are some people that really care. We found moments of hope even amid the unholy damage in Idlib, a city remembering 12 years of war and still in rebel hands. Here, Sam's built a hospital from an office building, and in surgeries weeks before, Samaritar repaired 12-year-old Suzanne's arms and legs. You want to stand up again?

Stand up? Yeah. With me? All right. Then let's do it. What does that moment of progress mean to you? I gotcha. It means that there are days where you fight bouts of helplessness and hopelessness and you wonder what exactly you're accomplishing, and you feel like you're trying to empty the ocean with a small cup, because it never ends, and the suffering never ends, and it never seems to be going away,

but it's those brief flashes that are enough to keep you going for another month. There will be many months ahead, with no end in sight to the war. Have there been airstrikes since the earthquake? No. Yes, there have been airstrikes. This area experienced an artillery bombardment four days after the earthquake.

How do you explain the cruelty of conducting airstrikes against people who have just survived this terrible catastrophe? The question, they thought, had an obvious answer. They told us Assad is a criminal. With no prospect of peace, Dr. Attar worries now about vital follow-up surgeries, physical therapy, and prosthetic limbs. They're going to struggle. And what future do they have? I keep thinking of that girl on a mechanical ventilator who's paralyzed from the chest down. What happens to her? Who takes care of her?

Normally in Syria, a big part of your community is family. But what do you do when your entire family has been killed and there's nobody else around? Who takes care of you? You have volunteered at this hospital during the war. You came rushing back after the earthquake. You have treated battlefield injuries in Ukraine as a volunteer.

And I have to ask, why do you do this work? It's not just about showing up to help out. A lot of these missions, for me, are about bearing witness. They're about connection and solidarity and advocacy. Just being able to be here, be there, and look these nurses, look these doctors in the eye, and shake their hand and be present with them, be on the ground with them, it just lets them know that it's a small world. They're not alone.

We're all connected. And that when the world is literally crashing down around you and collapsing, all we've got is each other. And that's part of the reason why I keep coming back. Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Each other and courage have been enough to steal moments of triumph. But northwest Syria will be forced to ration mercy. 11,000 wounded from the quakes are on a long journey,

victims of a vicious and forgotten war, sustained only by the compassion of humanitarian hearts. Are you good? Very good. Very good? All right. Can you take one step? One step. Does that feel good? Very good. Very good? All right. Can you take one step? One step. Does that feel good?

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For millions of consumers of conservative news, Ray Epps is a notorious villain, a provocateur responsible for turning peaceful protests on January 6th into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. The irony is that Epps was a passionate supporter of President Trump, who went to Washington to protest the 2020 election. But his often contradictory behavior that day spawned a full-fledged conspiracy theory, casting him as a government agent who incited an insurrection. Today, Epps is in hiding after death threats forced him to sell his home. So who is Ray Epps? Tonight, you'll hear from the government and the man himself. As soon as President Trump is finished speaking, we are going to the Capitol. It's that direction. At six foot four in his desert camouflage, bright red Trump

hat and military style backpack, Ray Epps stood out from the crowd on January 6th. That's him running toward the U.S. Capitol alongside the vanguard of rioters who first attacked and overran police. Let's go! What do you think when you see this now? It brings back some bad memories. It's hard to see our Capitol under attack. It's been more than two years since the storming of the Capitol, but Ray and his wife Robin told us they relive January 6th every day of their lives. Some people have said, well, just let it

go and let it die down. What they don't understand is it doesn't. What exactly was the role of Ray Epps in the chaos of January 6th? The theory, Epps, a former member of the Oath Keepers, was an FBI informant who incited the crowd on January 6th bubbled up from a right-wing news site called Revolver News, run by a former Trump speechwriter. He's the smoking gun of the entire fedsurrection. And landed on Fox News primetime. According to a new investigation from Revolver, Epps may have led the breach team that first entered the Capitol on January 6th. The convoluted conspiracy theory made its way to Capitol Hill. It's not the Proud Boys who engage in the initial breach. It's Ray Epps at that precise moment. How did Ray Epps know that there were going to be pipe bombs?

Ms. Sadburn, who is Ray Epps? That question has animated Fox News host Tucker Carlson for nearly two years. Ray Epps? He's on video several times encouraging crimes, riots, breaches of the Capitol. Carlson has focused on Epps more than 20 times on his top-rated show, a half-dozen times so far this year. He's obsessed with me. He's going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives. Why? To shift blame on somebody else. If you look at it, Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Gates, they're all telling us before this thing that it was stolen.

So you tell me who has more impact on people, them or me. Epps, once a loyal Fox News watcher, told us he doesn't understand how he got cast as the villain. The Epps version is more mundane. They believe the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump and considered January 6th a legitimate protest. It was a sloppy election. And then to top that off, you have talking heads reporting that there's problems with the voting machines and different things like that. The election's stolen. So, yeah, we had concerns.

I wanted to be there. I wanted to witness this with my own eyes. Epps went to Washington with his 36-year-old son and almost immediately stepped into trouble. The conspiracy theory starts here, the night of January 5th. Give me one minute. Give me one minute. On the streets of D.C., tensions were running high at a pro-Trump rally being live-streamed on the Internet. The Marine veteran tried to take charge. I'm going to put it out there. I'm probably going to go to jail.

Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol. Into the Capitol. Peaceful! Peaceful! Fed! Fed! Fed! Peaceful! Fed! Fed! To some in the crowd, Epps seemed so over the top, he must have been a government agent, a Fed sent to entrap them. When you said, we have to go into the Capitol, we have to go into the Capitol, what were you thinking? I said some stupid things.

My thought process, we surround the Capitol, we get all the people there. I mean, I had problems with the election. It was my duty as an American to peacefully protest, along with anybody else that wanted to. The next morning, January 6th, Epps was out by the Washington Monument, still focused on a single goal. We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are. It's that direction. Here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol. While President Trump was still speaking at the Ellipse, Ray Epps walked toward the Capitol. He told us he wanted to be up front to help keep the peace.

Hold my back. be up front to help keep the peace. What happened next at Peace Circle, where protesters first overran police, is seen as a smoking gun. Epps pulled this agitated rioter aside and said something. Conspiracists say he was giving marching orders because seconds later, this happened. The first Capitol Police officer goes down. As closely as you can remember, what exactly did you say to him? Dude, we're not here for that. The police aren't the enemy, something like that. Did anyone from the federal government direct you to be here at the Peace Circle at this

time? No. No one from the FBI? No. Your old comrades with the Oath Keepers? No. I think what is so damning about the video is that there's a barrier there. The barrier gets knocked down, and a police officer, a female police officer, gets knocked down.

And the mob, including you, walk over the barrier and march on toward the Capitol. Why didn't you stop to help this police officer who was knocked over? When she was knocked down, and I started to go towards her to help this police officer who was knocked over? When she was knocked down and I started to go towards her to help her up, and I saw a billy club over here in the corner of my eye, and I thought, you know, they're going to think I'm part of this. So I backed off. You were part of it.

I was there. I wasn't a part of that, knocking her down. And he wasn't part of the violence. There's a big difference there. Ray Epps was never seen committing an act of violence that day or entering the Capitol. Epps told us when he saw the violence, his fervor to enter the building became a desire to play peacemaker. Hey, guys. They're not the enemy. They're not the enemy.

Appreciate you guys. And police body cam video backs him up. I thought I could stop it. So I went back and forth. I talked people down and worked the line back and forth. Step down, step down. We're good here, that kind of thing. And I kept it that way for quite some time.

Take a step back. We're holding ground. We're not trying to get people hurt. They don't want to get hurt. You don't want to get hurt. Back up. Epps says he left the Capitol grounds to help evacuate an injured man. The time, 2.54 p.m. I looked back at the Capitol,

and there was people crawling up the Capitol walls, and it looked like, it looked terrible. I mean, I was kind of ashamed of what was going on at that point. So I started to walk out. He told us that's when he sent this text to his nephew. Conspiracists saw it as the true confession of an agent provocateur. I was in front with a few others. I also orchestrated it. Explain this to me. I was boasting to my nephew. I helped get people there. I was directing people to the Capitol that morning. You know how this sounds. I know exactly how it sounds. I've been scolded by my wife for using that word.

I shouldn't have used that word. When you add up all of these things, as your critics have done, you've given them a lot of ammunition to paint you as this instigator. There was an effort to make me the scapegoat. If Ray Epps was a covert plant, he is the worst covert plant of all time. If you are part of some elaborate conspiracy against thousands of people in Washington, D.C., I don't know why you'd want to stand out from the crowd the way Ray Epps did.

Tom Jocelyn is a researcher and author, one of the country's top terrorism experts, tapped by the January 6th committee to help write its final report, which found evidence far-right extremists like the Proud Boys planned and executed the breach of the Capitol. He says the committee interviewed Epps and found he wasn't important enough to put in the report. I wouldn't defend Ray Epps or anybody else who was on the Capitol grounds that day. I would just defend the facts.

So the idea that he's leading the charge or really orchestrating it is just contradicted by this mountain range of evidence. And that's what the conspiracy theorists want you to do, right? They don't want you to look at this mountain range of evidence. They want you to turn around and focus on this pebble on the ground named Ray Epps. They also don't want you to look at

what President Trump was saying and doing. He calls Epps' behavior baffling, but not evidence of a conspiracy. They've got to come up with some sort of connective tissue between Ray Epps and the FBI, and they've got none. And so they can make up all sorts of ad hoc arguments to justify their beliefs, but that's all they are. It's not actual investigative work. It's not actual evidence. The January 6th committee looked at the evidence, video, phone records, travel receipts. So did the FBI. When Epps got back to Arizona on January 8th, a relative told him he was on an FBI poster seeking information about certain rioters. We literally hung up the phone and walked right into the house, sat down and called the FBI. Do you remember what you said to the FBI?

Told them who I was and that I would cooperate in any way I could. I didn't break any laws. Two months later, he met with agents. So when we met with the FBI, I mean, it was like, finally, we're going to clear this up. There was no, I take the fifth, there was none of that. It was just like, we're talking right now. I went through everything and they had a lot of questions. In the summer of 2021, the FBI took his picture off the Bureau's website. Epps thought that would end his troubles, but it only added fuel to the conspiracy. A new piece in Revolver News notes that the FBI removed a photo of Ray Epps from its Most Wanted page this summer.

How about the one guy? Go in, go in. Get in there, everybody. Epps, get in there. Go, go, go. Nothing happens to him. The Epps would dispute that. After former President Trump mentioned Epps by name, harassment and death threats picked up. I pray to come to you to kill you. What do you think when you open a letter like that? Scares me to death. It got so bad they were forced to sell their five-acre ranch outside Phoenix. They're now in hiding, living in this 300-square-foot recreational vehicle somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. We agreed not to disclose exactly where. It's so sad what people have done to Ray and to us and to our lives. Sometimes I've used my maiden name just so that we don't call attention.

I have a hard time being a man, being a Marine, being on the run. I had to do the necessary things to keep my family safe. If you're wondering what the FBI has to say about all this, for the past two years it has said nothing. After repeated queries by 60 Minutes, late this past week, the Bureau issued this statement, quote, Ray Epps has never been an FBI source or an FBI employee. It's no secret Big Hollywood Studios like a sure bet, and there's no shortage of predictable movies to prove it.

Which is probably why Nicolas Cage left Los Angeles for Las Vegas a long time ago. At 59, the Academy Award winner owns one of the most eclectic lists of film credits in the business. He's been at it for more than 40 years, pivoting from leading man to action hero to a slew of lesser features and back again. But we learned behind that kaleidoscope of characters is a unique imagination and an encyclopedic knowledge of film that seems to motivate everything Nicolas Cage does, his work, his life, and even this. I always loved that character. Cage's brand new gold Lamborghini, a tribute to a beloved 1968 film directed by Federico Fellini featuring this gilded Ferrari. It was a crazy beautiful Fellini movie and it inspired me so when I saw this I said that's the car it's not a Ferrari which

would be great but they don't really have any gold Ferraris. Have you driven this out here beyond the gates? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Woo! It's fun. It's fun. Snap, crackle, pop, right? By any measure, Nicolas Cage is not slowing down. He's revamping the role of Dracula in a movie out now called Renfield and has another five movies coming up. We met Nicolas Cage at the home he shares with his wife and young daughter

in Las Vegas. It is exactly what you might imagine Nicolas Cage's home in Las Vegas would be. Part goth cathedral, part avant-garde gallery. There's an African crow in the living room, a cat that could scare off a burglar, and this. This is my black dragon that's a monitor lizard. He'll get to be about six feet long. He's like having a real dinosaur in your house. It's kind of amazing. And he's alive. That kind of imagination is in his DNA. Nicholas Kim Coppola was born on the fringe of cinema royalty. His uncle is director Francis Ford Coppola. He told us his mother, Joy, a choreographer, suffered from severe mental illness and was institutionalized for much of his childhood. He and his two brothers were raised by his father,

August, a literature professor who introduced him to the masterworks of Italian and German filmmakers, igniting his love of cinema. As a teenager, he worked at a movie theater and says he was mesmerized by the big screen. Was it about being a movie star or was it about escaping into something else? It was about wanting to be James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and wearing that red jacket, wanting to be John in Saturday Night Fever. I came out of the cinema electrified. I was like, yeah, wanting to go there. And after seeing James Dean in East of Eden, he did.

It was more meaningful to me than anything else I'd experienced. Music, you know, Beethoven, Beatles, painting. What I saw in that moment made me realize the power, the excitement of what you can convey through film performance, film performance. He's been in pursuit of that feeling for most of his life.

Hey, birdie. Inhabiting characters of every stripe. A baby-snatching ex-con. I'll be taking these huggies and whatever cash you got. To the bed. A Brooklyn baker. An alcoholic screenwriter. You have a cell phone I could borrow?

A treasure hunter. And even himself. Cage's first feature role came in 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The 17-year-old blends into the background, but his Coppola name did not. His uncle directed The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Sick of being hazed about it on set, he changed his name, inspired by a Marvel superhero with unbreakable skin. When people think of Nicolas Cage, I wanted it to have like a punk rock energy at that time. I wanted it to be unpredictable. You don't know what you're going to get. I wanted it to be exciting and a little scary.

It has been. After more than 100 movies, Nicolas Cage is almost his own genre. He told us when he read the script for Peggy Sue Got Married, he worried it was going to be too much like the play Our Town. How did you know about that? Which he hated. I grew up watching Gumby and listening to Pokey, and I thought, well, that would be a good voice for a character,

especially in this movie. Thank you for saving me. And so I thought if I do that that won't be boring that'll be like what the hell is he doing? Things just work out better in the end. And Kathleen Turner said like what the hell is he doing? I think I frustrated her with the performance but I adored her. Did she ever say like knock it off? Oh yeah! her with the performance, but I adored her. Did she ever say, like, knock it off? Oh, yeah.

But Cage would draw from odd places again in the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona. How did you envision that role? H.I. McDonough was like that thrush muffler symbol, the Woody Woodpecker with the cigar. I saw him with, like, the red hair sticking up, like a Looney Tunes character come to life again. I want to ask you about one scene in that movie. You're having your mugshot taken and you turn and as you're walking away, you slap your ass. Let me know how those come out. I had it all thought out. Giddy up, you know, like he's getting himself up out of the mugshot. Cage's catalog of inspiration extends from cartoons to the haunting German films he watched

as a child. You've been influenced by German expressionists. What does that look like? Well, what it is is specifically movies like Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu or Metropolis. The mad scientist shows the robot hand and he goes like that, you know, it's just like a large expressionistic acting. So I put that into Moonstruck. I lost my hand! That's exactly a direct steal. I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride! You want me to take my heartbreak, put it away and forget? Come on. 35 years on, Ronnie Camareri, the operatic, one-handed baker in the romantic comedy Moonstruck,

remains one of his most memorable roles. You can do this one thing for me. But Cage says it was a small movie called Leaving Las Vegas that was the answer to his prayers. What did you think when you first read that script? That was the feeling that I had with East of Eden and James Dean. I was like, this is the kind of movie I really want to make. A heartbreaking drama about two wounded people who somehow have this true love.

How did you figure out how to play that role? Well, I looked at a lot of great movies. I looked at Chris Christopherson in A Star is Born. From him, I got that feeling of he was always smiling. In my view, the only thing sadder than a person who's in a sad situation and knows it is a person who's in a sad situation and doesn't know it. You're like some kind of antidote

mixes with the liquor and keeps me in balance. But that won't last forever. I was saying to myself, literally, I'm never gonna win the Academy Award, so let's just do this anyway, because nobody wanted to make it. That won't last forever. I was saying to myself, literally, I'm never going to win the Academy Awards, so let's just do this anyway, because nobody wanted to make it. At the Oscars, you announced on stage

you loved the idea of blurring the line between art and commerce by making this small film. And then you start doing these big action films. Yeah. That was about staying unpredictable and trying something new again. But at the time when I did it, I think it pissed a lot of people off. You know, it was like, well, you're an actor's actor.

You're not supposed to be doing adventure films. You will not. But he did. The Rock with Sean Connery. A prison break movie, Con Air. Put the bunny back in the box. The National Treasure franchise, and Face Off, where Cage's character literally swaps faces with John Travolta. An absurd idea that delivered big box office returns

and helped catapult Cage into the category of Hollywood's highest paid actors. Where's your head at when that starts happening? Oh, great, now I can make another Leaving Las Vegas. Let's keep doing it. Let's keep mixing it up. Let's keep challenging ourselves. But Cage ended up facing a different kind of challenge. We wanted to ask him about reports that he blew through his fortune buying exotic cars, mansions around the globe, even a dinosaur skull.

But his African crow, Hoogan, objected to the line of questioning. Hi, Hoogan. Right on cue. It's nice to hear you're talking again. I know everybody in the house kind of freaked you out. The houses, right? Castles in Germany, in England, an island, a mansion in New Orleans. Right.

What's that about? I was over-invested in real estate. It wasn't because I spent $80 on an octopus. The real estate market crashed, and I couldn't get out in time. How much money did you end up owing to the IRS and to your creditors? I paid them all back, but it was about $6 million. I never filed for bankruptcy. He moved to tax-free Las Vegas, dug in, and worked nonstop, making three to four movies a year.

That had to be a dark period for you. It was dark, sure. Did the work help you get through? No doubt, work. Work was always my guardian angel. It may not have been blue chip, but it was still work. When somebody suggests during that period of time, when they say, these critics say, like,

ugh, he's just here for a paycheck, and he's phoning it in. Even if the movie ultimately is crummy, they know I'm not phoning it in, that I care every time. But there are those folks that are probably thinking that the only good acting that I can do is the acting that I chose to do by design, which was more operatic and larger than life and so-called cage rage and all that. But you're not going to get that every time. But part of the appeal is the cage rage, a moniker his fans have for his outsides, some say, over-the-top moments on film. I'm trying to help you and you won't listen!

You go for it. I've heard you've described it as like going for the triple axel every time. And sometimes you land it and sometimes you don't. Well, not every time. But there are things that I do want to go for, sometimes that I have a vision for, and I do. Like his 2021 performance as a heartbroken chef in the movie Pig. None of it is real. The critics aren't real.

The customers aren't real. Because this isn't real. When I played Robin Pig, I felt I entered the room. I felt that I was closer to me than maybe I've ever been before in film performance. She died. What do you mean, closer to you?

That I wasn't acting. I felt that I was doing exactly what I care about. I think it's probably my best movie, and I think I'll put that up against leaving Las Vegas or anything else. That would include his turn as Dracula in his latest movie, Renfield. Cage Meta sat a favorite hangout on the strip to talk about the Count. We have much to discuss. Dracula is daunting.

I am Count Dracula. Because it's a legacy. He's my servant. Dracula is a character that has been done well many times. He's also a character that has been done well many times. He's also a character that has been done poorly many times. But for me, I think Christopher Lee, he was my Dracula. He made Dracula scary. You know, we had a happy marriage in terms of I could bring where I wanted to go, like into the camera with the teeth, almost like the shark and jaws like you seem like a guy who's all in

all the time you don't do anything halfway very insightful sharon very very insightful let's eat On Tuesday, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox agreed to pay Dominion more than $787 million for untruths it repeatedly broadcast about the company after the 2020 presidential election. In October, Dominion's president, John Poulos, told our Anderson Cooper his company offered Fox evidence that allegations of vote rigging against the company were lies. Government officials told them. Partisan government officials told them. People inside the Trump administration told them. Local election officials on both sides of the aisle told them. This is not a matter of not aisle told them. This is not a matter of not knowing the truth. They knew the truth. Fox still faces a similar suit from Smartmatic, another vote technology company. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.