The Big Picture - The Nicolas Cage Hall of Fame and ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

It’s Nic Cage season! To celebrate, Van Lathan and Rob Mahoney join Sean to talk about the new meta-action-comedy ‘The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent’ (1:00) before building a shrine to Cage in the form of his Hall of Fame (35:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guests: Van Lathan and Rob Mahoney Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the Prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, the great Bill Hader. We'll talk about the show's wild twists and turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Nick Cage. Today, we're discussing the new meta action comedy, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,

and its self-parodying star, Nicolas Cage, who plays himself in the film, sort of. Joining me to talk all things Cage and help me construct his Hall of Fame. Two very busy men right now. Two Cage ragers. Rob Mahoney in the middle of the NBA playoffs, stepping off the podium to come hang with us

for a little bit. And Van Lathan, soon to be published author of fat crazy and tired co-host of higher learning and the ringer verse and all kinds of stuff guys what's up good what's going on man this calendar invite wasn't for all of us to go trip acid together in mallorca is what you're saying i'm so sorry i'm so we're not doing that here today but maybe in the near future maybe when the playoffs are ending and the pub week is over we can all get stoned together. But now we're talking about Nick and this new movie.

Before we get into the movie, you know, Van, you and I were on a pod about a month ago. And you were like, whenever you do a Nick Cage episode, I have a lot to say. And I earmarked that. And lo and behold, literally 30 days later, there's an entire movie about being Nick Cage out in the world. What's your relationship to Cage? A lot of people have other... A lot of people have actors that are their spirit animals. It's obvious that when you do the rewatchables, there's a connection from Bill to either Leo or Matt Damon,

depending on which one it is. Usually Matt Damon, but yeah, sure. Normally a Matt Damon world. This guy is my guy like nicholas cage is you know more i have guys who are my actual spirit animals like they represent in culture like denzel washington wesley snipes but in terms of a dude who i've always looked up and just been surprised by, bewildered by, perplexed by, but always I'm like, Jesus, that's some kind of character right there. It's Nick Cage.

It starts from when I'm really young. It starts from him doing weird things on screen and then him watching him build his career up from the Honeymoon in Vegas era to the Trapped in Paradise guy to the Leaving Las Vegas guy to Con Air to just being someone I could never quite peg. And I, more than anything, like for a Hollywood career that's what I uh admire someone who you can't ever pigeonhole or peg or someone who can't be told this is what they do and that's what Nick Cage's career has been to me Rob what about for you you're a cage guy absolutely I mean he's someone who keeps you on the edge of your seat who keeps you guessing as Van alluded to like I don't know how you could walk into a cage movie and think you know what version of him you're getting uh what modulation of his voice you're gonna get from scene to scene that's an exciting performer that's somebody who regardless of what the movie is about

it ends up kind of being about nick cage in a way and that's that gravitational pull he's so watchable in anything he's in. Let's talk about the unbearable weight of massive talent. So the plot of this movie, this is sort of neither here nor there, but we're going to identify it quickly. So unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the actor Nick Cage accepts $1 million

to attend a wealthy fan's birthday party. That fan is played by Pedro Pascal of The Mandalorian and a number of other things. Things take wildly unexpected turn when cia operatives played by tiffany haddish and ike baron holtz recruit cage for an unusual mission taking on the role of a lifetime he soon finds himself channeling his most iconic and beloved characters to save himself and his loved ones what you guys think of this movie dan Dan, what'd you think? I loved it. I loved it probably because of my cageness, the caginess. Sometimes I wish that people just lay into it. They just fall into whatever it is that people think about them.

You know, there's so many performers out there, whether it be music, whether it be whatever, that spend all this time running from who they are. And I like this movie as an experiment, probably a little bit more than I like it as a movie, but the experiment was sublime to me. And I really feel like one of the reasons why I got attached to it was there's literally only one person in the world who could make this and have it come out this way. I mean, other people could make it, right? You could see Kevin Hart doing something like this,

but it wouldn't be any good. It wouldn't be anything to talk about. The only person who could make this right here and have it be this type of commentary on aging in Hollywood, on Hollywood itself, on actually how you must feel if you feel like you have massive talent. Like, if you think, if you are,

if you're not self-aware enough to actually have that thought about yourself, how your life must be, I thought the movie worked. And I wasn't expecting it to quite work as well as it did for me, but it worked. Rob, what about for you? Was it funny?

Was it effective satire? What was this movie? Yeah, I mean, I think it's both of those things. It's definitely a funny movie. I don't know that it really fulfills as much of a meditation on Cage as it could have been. I think at some points it's just like,

let's go gags, let's go Hollywood satire, as you're alluding to. Let's skewer probably a lot of the things that have been said on this podcast about wanting adult character-driven dramas and making movie star choices and all of these ideas that are kind of out there in the movie zeitgeist. And all that stuff is really effective. there's still a little bit of meat on the bone in terms of i think they could have gone deeper with the conceit and really dug into cage a little bit more but what they give you is really entertaining it's really fun and some of that is just like god bless the action comedy one of the great templates we have for making entertainment movies and it really works to great effect here because you get Cage playing the pastiche of all

his other great action movies and then layering this comedy on top of it. I think that part of it really works well. Yeah. One of the tricky parts of it to me is that it's difficult to do broad satire when the people who are participating are already larger than life. We know for a fact that Nicolas Cage bought a dinosaur skull that was actually stolen and needed to be returned and that was revealed in discovery when when he when the federal government was interrogating his tax history that's a true thing about nicholas cage that is public information so when we know stuff about this incredibly not just outlandish performer but outlandish human being it's a little hard to be like here's a crazy movie where he's doing crazy stuff.

Imagine if this was what the real Nick Cage was like. We already know what the real Nick Cage is like. So it's not as necessarily nuanced or incisive about the persona like you're talking about, Rob.

But it is really fun and funny and it feels more like Lethal Weapon than it does like The Player or Dr. Strangelove or something like that. The tonality is pretty broad and a lot of fun. What do you guys think of Pedro Pascal

increasingly becoming a famous person in the world? Just good at whatever he does. He is, right? I think The Mandalorian is actually the poorest display of who Pedro Pascal is because you never really get him. You know what I mean? The Mandalorian who Pedro Pascal is because you never really get them you know what I mean like you the the Mandalorian is Pedro Pascal it's such a weird thing to have your most iconic role be something where you never ever show your face and when it's just kind of your voice and it's some completely overlooked stunt guy in there doing this thing but he he brings a certain a certain

sort of authority to the screen that just, it works. And it doesn't matter whatever he is, he's becoming one of those actors that as soon as you see his face, you know it's time to have a good time. It's time to really get into a movie that you're really going to enjoy. He hops around genres. He'll show up as an FBI guy. He'll show up in The King's Man. He'll show up in something really serious. But he's just a top flight, top rate performer. And I like the fact that he got to get a little

bit more wacky in this one. I like that you brought The Mandalorian because honestly, not to just take side swipes at the book of Boba Fett, but one of my takeaways from that show was every time somebody else was trying to do that exact same thing of acting from underneath a mask, it made me appreciate what Pedro Pascal does even more and the warmth and that presence and that energy he brings, how much life he can bring to a character like that. And this movie is at its absolute best when it's a hangout movie with Nick Cage and Pedro Pascal.

It really only works in a plot and is this interesting for the full runtime sense because those two guys are good together in so many different contexts. I'm curious what you guys think about the general premise of this movie for wide audiences. The three of us, we really care about movies. We're really interested in Cage. We're going to talk about the arc of Cage's career, this unbelievable arc of 100 plus movies. But do you think common moviegoers are like, I want to see Nick Cage play himself

and get into wacky hijinks on a Spanish island? Like, is that because the movie didn't do that great at the box office? It made about $7 million over the weekend, which is not horrendous in this landscape, but it's not great. And I wonder if we've kind of been too far down the road in the Nick Cage story.

You know, we have 35 years with him at this point, almost 40 years with him as a performer. And is it too inside baseball? Is it too winking for modern audiences? Is it just not a good idea? I'm curious how you think the movie is being received in the wider world. Well, it depends if you think a movie's job is to bring in people who don't care about movies. Maybe that's just not what the audience is going to be

for the cinematic and theatrical experience going forward, because this is not just a movie about celebrating Nick Cage and a commentary on his career. It's about how movies connect human beings,

like what we bond. I mean, who could possibly relate to arguing over your third favorite movie of all time? I can't imagine any of us would. Once again, he strikes. we bond i mean who could possibly relate to arguing over your third favorite movie of all time i i can't imagine any of us would once again he strikes like economical rob i like i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm just getting my palate wet on what you were saying you brilliant motherfucker sorry and then you just and he he jumps off bro like wow okay um i just gotta, one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast

is because after we did a Batman podcast and we ranked all the Batman movies, this trio in particular, Van's recognition of Rob's podcasting traits means I'd like to do many more of these. And it's amazing, within 10 minutes already, Van thunderstruck again by Rob's brevity. Rob is like one of the refs at a game where he's looking into the camera

and giving you what happened. You know what I mean? And you're like, yo, I want a little bit more. Explain to me more stuff about basketball. Tell me about some other calls. But they got a flagrant two assessed. Player is ejected. I'm like, no.

I'm like, no. Scott, stay right here. Talk to me a little bit more about what goes on on the court. Anyway. I feel like this started as a nice compliment and veered into me being a cop. You could have been like a sergeant. You could be a sergeant. And I see a sergeant in you somewhere.

Like a nice desk sergeant. But like that's trying to change the force from the inside. I don't know who's worse to be compared to, a or scott foster that's really tricky territory wow scott not great scott foster stuff um that was a tough one i actually apologize about the scott foster the nice desk cop trying to change the force from the inside that's a movie we can make together but scott foster yeah i apologize about that um i i tend to agree so number one, I think I agree with the point. And my answer to that was going to be that there is no more of that. There's no common moviegoer to me anymore.

I think the common moviegoer is dead. now in a lot of these economic and cultural shakeups at different streamers and um for for the studios is that they're realizing that and in realizing that uh they're trying to figure out a way to tailor their content to overlap the quadrants as much and squeeze out what's left of it because the reality is that uh with when when all of these different studios basically crewed up when they all basically crewed up it was like okay come over here to this streamer for all this stuff come to this streamer for all of this stuff come to this streamer for all of that stuff they have more than anything what that made you do is like it kind of bifurcated trifurcated whatever separated the audience out to where people go to whatever they want for whatever they want.

There's no actor that this movie is like, uh, that this movie could be made with other than Nick Cage. And I really don't think that there's an actor that this movie is an intense hit with, uh, because I think movie going tastes and, and sort of,

uh, rhythms have changed in a way. You know, and I don't think it matters like as much. There's a great, it's a great weekend for movies right now. You know, everything, everywhere all at once is in theaters.

The Cage movie is in theaters. There's a lot of non-comic book fare that's in theaters right now for people to go see. And a different palette. Sonic 2 was fucking great, right? So a different palette for people. And outside of some of the IP stuff, they're not really doing crazy gangbusters

because I don't know if people think that a movie about nick cage in this way is something that you leave your couch to go see yeah i wonder i wonder if this movie had come out in 2006 instead of in 2022 if that would have been different not just because the box office was different at that time but because our perception of cage was different at that time maybe this is an entree into a bigger conversation about the man because he's been through so many cycles of understanding from the audience's perspective and made so many different kinds of movies that I think it's possible that for people who are not paying close attention, that they have just accepted that Nicolas Cage is a guy who does straight to video crap and he's at that phase of his career. And we had a conversation, not dissimilar to this one, about Bruce Willis when the news was revealed about what he's going through and the kind of movies that he's been making over the last five to 10 years.

And there's this understanding, maybe if you're in your 50s or your 60s and you were a 90s and 2000s box office idol, you're phased out you're not as important but now you know cage is actually in the midst of a kind of a comeback i i guess i mean it feels like his like third or fourth comeback but there's something has has shifted in terms of his respectability in terms of the way that we appreciate him i don't know does what i'm saying make sense man it does i i hesitate to say that nick cage is coming back because what he what he does is he never quite leaves it's an interesting trick and it's hard to pull off um so the direct to dvd portion of your career it's it's always interesting because like i was talking about this on another pod to

where i'll look up on amazon prime and i'll see these direct to dvd movies and i'll be like yo what the hell how did anth Anthony Hopkins and Clive Owen and Lawrence Fishburne do a movie that goes like, you know, direct to Amazon Prime? Like, what the hell happened? It makes me look at the movie. Because I'm like, yo, what is this? Because it, you know, it happens every now and again. But with

Nick Cage, I think he's proven something. And we were really paying attention to his career in the first place. He's always done the same thing. It's's he's done films that were like we're gonna talk about it but he he does movies that are like he goes up and he goes down and he goes all around he just does things that are that are interesting to him and the phases in his life are so incredibly different from one another that you never know

what's going to be interesting to him. You know, and in the time that we wrote off Nick Cage, there's always a couple of movies that if we would have been watching, they are really good. Like, I think when Knowing came out, right? Like, people had already said,

hey, Nick Cage is gone. The other guy is gone. He's out of here. He's done. That is a really good movie. That is a really strong movie. That is a really, and I think I had kind of blown him off at that point. Because I don't know if I ever told you this, Sean.

I was accosted by Nick Cage at a bar in LA one time. What happened? What did you say to him? I didn't say anything. Acosta is probably the wrong word. I had on a New York, a New Orleans Saints

championship shirt. Big Saints fan. Yeah. And all of a sudden this guy goes, I fucking love New Orleans. And he starts talking about how much he loves New Orleans.

And I look around and I go, I actually said to him, straight out of a movie, I said, you're Nicolas Cage. Like I said to him, I said, you're Nicolas Cage. And he wants to talk about New Orleans. He's drunk.

He's got his hand all on my shoulder and like a weird, and he's strong. He's a strong man. After it dawned on me that I'm having this conversation, I actually had to say, hey, bro, let go of me. He was just being

super cool, but at that moment, I thought, oh, man, this is probably the end. These guys hanging out in Hollywood bars and accosting random people with saint shirts on like he's never gonna come back and guess what he came back he'll always come back because he never really leaves because what he's doing quite very quietly sean is having his career on his own

terms whatever crazy ridiculous wacky stupendous uh fucking out there terms those are, he is doing his thing the way he wants to do it. Tom Cruise cannot continue to be Tom Cruise right now without making more Mission Impossible movies. Vin Diesel cannot continue to be Vin Diesel right now without making more Fast and the Furious movies. A lot of these guys who are getting up there a little bit, they're doing these films and they're big huge films don't get me wrong but if they don't do those movies then they're kind of like no one gives a shit but nicholas cage he's doing movies that mean something to him so they really it really doesn't matter if they mean anything to anybody else there's so much there one you just

pitched massive talent to you and nick cage traipsing through the bars of los angeles which i would watch in a heartbeat uh two also he does love new orleans in fact he lived in new orleans for quite a long time i think he i think he owns a haunted house in new orleans maybe he once did i know a lot of stuff on nick cage researching this pod um and three you're you're totally right in a weird way he has like decentralized the idea of being a movie star by just putting movies out all the time and some of them are bad and some of them are amazing and every seven or eight years you get one where you're like wow this guy is legitimately an amazing actor and then a few more come along and maybe you skip them or you catch them on amazon prime and then he does it again and he comes back and we're in we are in an up moment i would say in

the aftermath of pig and now this movie getting the wide release unlike some of his other recent films it does feel like we're up on him rob let's go back to the beginning do you remember the first time you saw nick cage i do um it was in the 2000 movie the family man wow jesus christ yeah um i was 11 years old i went to the theater had a fun time and for a while there that's who nick cage was to me was a guy who was just trying to understand the true value of family and uh a couple years later my older brother ryan introduced me to face off and it blew my teenage mind. Uh, so, so I got course corrected pretty quickly. Ben,

you look, you look devastated right now. Are you fucking with me? I'm a Thuzla. Like, am I the oldest man on the planet? My God. Like,

uh, yeah. Okay. But that's me. The question. That's what's so interesting about this, right? Rob's 11 in the year, what was that, 2000 when that movie came out? 2000, yeah.

And by this point, Nicolas Cage had already lived two or three cycles of movie stardom and fame. And I'm coming to him probably, I don't know, six or seven years before that. Van, when did you first see Cage? Do you remember? Fucking Raisin, Arizona. Okay. All right. i don't know six or seven years before that then when did you first see cage do you remember fucking raising arizona okay all right my mother loves the movie raising arizona this is before we had any clue who the coens were in terms of like demeaning something to us raising arizona was a staple in my house but so was peggy sue got married we we lived in a Nicolas Cage home right you know we like we actually didn't Moonstruck was a blind spot for me for many years I don't know why like it was a it was a blind spot for me for a long time but Raisin Arizona was a film if I got

my mother on right now it might be her favorite movie right just everything about raising arizona is absolutely surrealism perfect legend done in this weirdly affecting way you know and so raising arizona that's 1987 i was a wee kid and hi him and he's he's a robber he's got a heart they've got a baby you know what i mean you have it's just the the whole movie to me is is is perfect and then throughout my it's almost like i grew with nick nick's nick's career goes in different ways and then at my movie watching zenith of my life when i'm obsessing over films more than in more than any other time he wins the best actor academy award for leaving las vegas and it and it it we meet right at a point to where i can first begin to appreciate a movie like that i'm maybe 15 or 16 and i'm coming

off of my palate getting more and more serious right i'm coming off of understanding pulp fiction a couple of years before then and seeing how important these movies are i'm coming off of uh i think fresh is around that time another movie that i really love more serious films i'm studying films more and then comes this very serious a bummer of a watch of a watch type movie to where it's really about watching this guy break down and a lot on a lot and and watching someone around him allowing him to do it in a very humane almost enabling way and i was ready for it and then at that time if you watch him in in that role he's just, that's the badass actor. I'm the king of the world type of situation. So those are the movies that resonate as much.

And then, you know, we go right to the movie theater after that, baby, one of the greatest action movies of all time, Con Air and Face Off is in there. He's just in his fucking bag for a couple of years there. Yeah.

I'm trying to think of the first time, the first time I ever saw him was probably Honeymoon in Vegas. If I'm being real and catching that movie on cable. But Raising Arizona and Peggy Sue Got Married were on television all the time growing up. And so I saw them there. And those performances, the way that he is in those movies is unlike any other actor. The fine line between absurdity, goofiness, then like you know ripcord intensity that he pulls out in performances that's one of the things that makes him so different the other thing is that you know van you're alluding to this as you talk about all the movies he's made

he's made every genre of movie he's had ever he's had so many different phases the idea of the family man being the introduction to him he's's already done his, like, I am a sort of sweet and thoughtful young man in movies like, you know, Valley Girl or Peggy Sue Got Married. And 15 years later, he's kind of like reviving that persona for himself. So he does this in a way like so different from the people you were just talking about, Van,

the Tom Cruises of the world, but it's sort of like, they're Tom Cruise in every movie. Nick Cage is Nick Cage in every movie, but the colors that he's painting with run from black to green to purple to red every time he's making a movie. I'm trying to think

of the one that really shook me up because I had the most fun, of course, with those 90s action movies. The Rock is my favorite Michael Bay movie. That's one of the great action movies of all time. He's like subverting

a nerd persona that I think he thought he had publicly but didn't actually have. You know like Stanley Goodspeed is not how anyone thinks of Nick Cage but I think he thought people thought that about him so he pursued this role to transform himself into an action hero which is kind of a

fascinating analysis of him unto itself um and that time is probably like the one that is best remembered for one generation and the second one is kind of the national treasure era of movie stardom which happened sort of in the early 2000s um how would you guys describe rob how would you describe his acting style what does what does does Nicolas Cage do that makes him different and special? I think he's the ultimate more than what's on the page actor. You know, some of his best acting comes out of really flat dialogue or kind of dumb scenes. And whatever you've got in the script, he's going to bring something incredible to it. And I think that's partly why he doesn't play a lot of well-adjusted characters. It's a lot of criminals, it's a lot of addicts and

alcoholics and drifters and veterans and ex-husbands, and all of them are pretty much imbalanced in some way. I think leaving Las Vegas is kind of at the center of that because one of the things I noticed watching a bunch of Cage movies for this pod was he never really sips a drink in a movie. Like, he chugs it every time, and that's kind of how he acts, too. It just goes from zero to I'm putting down this whole bottle of vodka all of a sudden. And it's really

unsettling to watch, but how could you not watch it? You know what I actually think is the... It's not the quintessential Cage movie, but it's the most... I would say it's not the quintessential Cage movie, but it's the most, I would say it's the most enduring film of his for me. It's actually not Leaving Las Vegas.

Leaving Las Vegas is the one, and look, I love Castro Troy. Love Castro Troy so much. Castro Troy is one of my favorite guys, but then what kind of happens is we get to know Cage as Caster and all of a sudden, John Travolta takes Caster from us.

You know what I mean? So then he, then Nicolas Cage has to be Sean and I'm like, oh, I don't like that. I want a whole movie of just Castro Troy. I want a Castro Troy prequel film. The Weatherman. So The Weatherman to me is this is sometimes what i think of when

i think about nicholas cage i think about nicholas cage playing a character who is himself but is swept up into a world uh that's kind of how i view adaptation that's kind of how I view adaptation. That's kind of how I view him in Leaving Las Vegas to a degree. That's kind of how I view him in Mandy a little bit. And in The Weatherman, he doesn't raise his voice. He almost flows with the scene.

He's still very much Nicolas Cage. Someone threw a Frosty at me. What is a Frosty? It's a dessert shake that you get from Wendy's. Why would someone throw that at you? That is Nicolas Cage type dialogue. Those are like

any other actor is going to feel absurd to me delivering those type of lines where they're that on the nose talking to fucking Michael Caine the only guy who won't feel absurd in that situation to me is Nicolas Cage there's no position or no set of narrative narratives or any type of world you can put him in where it feels it would feel ridiculous that he's in that world any any world that you can imagine, Nicolas Cage can make you believe that he's a

part of it. And that's why he's able to take the range of roles that he can take. Part of what's so extraordinary about him is the self-mythologizing. I think there's a way for him to create this persona, not just by taking those roles that you're talking about, Van, but by talking about himself. He's been going through this phase where he is much more open and even keeled in the public. He's done a lot of press for Massive Talent, which has been fascinating because he has not done a ton of press in the last 10 years. I think in part because there were some legal issues that he didn't want to discuss or some financial issues he didn't want to discuss.

But in the past, when asked to describe his acting style, he has called it nouveau shamanic. And also he has described what he does as mega acting, not just acting, but mega acting, which I love. And I was watching Wild at Heart, the 1990 David Lynch movie, one of the more extraordinary journeys into movie making in the history of movies a really a what wild controversial movie way over the top in many ways but also beautiful it's so like incredibly exciting watching people just say we're doing things a little bit differently here and in an interview for that lynch called nick cage the jazz musician of acting someone who just goes pure

feel i think that really summarizes what you're saying, Rob, which is that he looks at what's on the page and then he's like, what notes can I put around this? How can I make this more? How can I make this a little bit more daring? How can I take this on a longer journey than what you're expecting? How can I solo? He's kind of a soloist as a performer too. He's not somebody who blends into the background. He's not somebody who takes on a lot of small character parts. He's usually right at the center of the movie that he's making, which is fascinating for someone to be able to do that for, I guess, going on 35 years. He's not, you know, ever since those early films with his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, which we should talk about a little bit. He hasn't done a ton of supporting roles and he persists. You know, he's still there he still is in that

cruise class of leading men of a certain generation because he doesn't take on those smaller parts um i think he's really great i think he's really great in a lot of bad movies and i think he's a little bit off in a lot of good movies and so he has an unusual career where he's not he's sort of reliably charismatic but not always reliably playing to the right notes i'll give you an example of that a movie that we're not going to spend any more time talking about but um there was a movie that was released uh in 2019 called color out of space which is like a wild science fiction movie that was uh based on an hp lovecraft story and it's a way way over the top movie directed by richard, science fiction influenced. And he's

going mega big, Nick Cage. And he's not good. He's actually the worst part of the movie. And it's an interesting movie. And it's okay that he can be the worst part of the movie. It's like, he doesn't always know how to hit the correct phase on the Nick Cage-ometer. Occasionally, he breaks the Nick Cage-ometer. And that's notally, he breaks the Nick Cage-o-meter. And that's not a problem. But for the most part, it seems like he has a real handle on his instrument at this point. This task of building this Hall of Fame, guys, I think is going to be very, very hard.

Not just because I have to name a lot of movies and you can say yes or no when I name them, but because he's been a part of a ton of movies and you can say yes or no when i name them but because he's been a part of a ton of movies that are iconic he's also been a part of a lot of movies that are maybe not iconic but that people have a big relationship to like you have a big relationship to the weatherman van i don't even know if that's like the sixth best gore verbinski movie in my head so so this this is going to be challenging i listen i'll just let you guys know right now i respect everybody's opinions and you know sometimes i react i react very viscerally to

things that's just louisiana and me you know you say that you nicholas cage starts with the family man and i'm like jesus christ i'm old that was a that was a that was commentary on myself but i will tell you one thing sean i'll accept absolutely zero family man slander a weatherman slander just absolutely none all right like i like sean i love you to death you're one of the good ones if you know what i mean but it but the weatherman oh my god takes his daughter shopping yeah what else happens like he's shooting archery yeah i do like that michael k like that that i don't know why that movie just completely,

it just resonates with me, The Weatherman. I love that film. Love it. I'm seeing why Cage is kind of your spirit animal because I would not have anticipated this take from you, man. I didn't think this would be your corner. Oh, love. I, you know what?

He had gotten to a point to where I didn't think that he could be Cage on the other side. I thought that he had gotten to the point to where I didn't think that him being Cage meant that he could be vulnerable anymore. And I thought, because, you know, actors get to this point to where, you know, you can't really see them. A lot of times they can't be vulnerable in screen anymore. They get to this great situation. I feel like Al Pacino got there to where post, like, Heat, I couldn't see him just falling into a role

and, like, moving, like, liquid with it anymore. He always had to be Al Pacino and give it all you got when you see him right um but the weatherman was was nick to me kind of picking fun at his own at his own persona a little bit and coming back and showing you that he could just ground you emotionally again and it worked for me let's start this journey okay this is going to be hard i'm going to try to put as much context around every movie that we name as possible some of these are going to be easy to eliminate some of these are going to be quite hard let's start in 1982 with his first

film performance in which he plays brad's bud in fast times at ridgemont high i believe he is a co-worker of judge reinholds at the fast food joint in this movie safe to say this is not one of his 10 most sterling performances in his career right no yeah fry cook ain't gonna cut it i don't think fast times is out but that's the thing is he is a part of some of these amazing movies even if he is not at the center of them number two valley girl he plays randy girlfriend of the titular valley girl the kind of punk rock character this is his big break this is the movie where p first started to get recognized um valley girls ebbed and flowed in the culture but um it's a pretty cool movie

actually when we did a quentin tarantino's uh cinema experience podcast a few years back amy nicholson cited this one as a conversation point with quentin because it's played at the new beverly over the years is valley girl in the nick cage hall of fame how wide a net do we want to cast on this first pass i think is the question because there Nick Cage Hall of Fame. How wide a net do we want to cast on this first pass? I think is the question. Cause there's a version of this where we have 30 movies after the first pass. And there's a version where we have 15 to 18 movies.

I'd like to have between 15 and 20 after the first pass. So, you know, usually what we'll do is we'll go red, yellow, green. As we go through this, Amanda and I've built many halls of fame over the years,

never had as tall a task as this one. So, you know, fast times original high. That's a red easy. Never had as tall a task as this one. So, you know, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that's a red. Easy. Should Valley Girl be a yellow? I think we can do better. Okay, I get it.

To me, the Big Break movie always has to be in the Hall of Fame. Okay, okay. Because it's just, to me, people talk about seeing him in Valley Girl and seeing him as the next big star. And when someone pays off on that promise, you almost have to put it in. I can see how it could get kicked out after we do it. But the Big Break movie, to me, is very important to every actor's sort of career. Okay, Bobby, let's go yellow for Valley Girl.

Next up is Rumble Fish, directed, as I mentioned, by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. Nick Cage is a part of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, cinematic families in history. He did change his name shortly after these films in the

early 80s so that he was not known as Nicholas Coppola, which is his birth name, and changed it to Nick Cage because he did not want to be perceived as benefiting from nepotism. On the other hand, he does make three or four movies with his uncle. So, you know, on the one hand, he did benefit from a sense of nepotism. But also, I think it's pretty hard to dispute that he has earned his way into the acting pantheon given his talent.

You know, Rumblefish, he has a mid-tier part i feel like it's pretty clearly not in the hall of fame right no it's not in the hall of fame 1984 he makes racing with the moon a smaller film not a lot of people have seen that one's not in then he makes another film with his uncle coppola the cotton club plays vincent dwyer uh you guys seen the cotton club lately i haven't seen it lately i've seen it but not in 10 years maybe it's okay it's a fascinating miss i don't know maybe i'll have to find an opportunity to talk about that movie at more length 1984 he also makes birdie one thing i want to note about cage he makes like two or three movies a year like forever like yeah like every year he's in three movies like this guy

works not just because he needs money but because he wants to act. He lives to act. Birdie is a good movie, but is anybody going to make a case for it here? No. Okay, same. Two years go by. 1986, The Boy in Blue plays Ned Hanlon. I don't think this one's going to be in. And then once we get past The Boy in Blue, things start to get interesting. Yeah, for sure.

Reunited with Uncle Francis for Peggy Sue Got Married. Now, while Valley Girl was a movie that announced him, I would say Peggy Sue Got Married is the movie in which most people first saw him if they were going to the movies at that time. Because Peggy Sue Got Married, mid-tier hit. He's the second lead playing Kathleen Turner's future husband, boyfriend at the time. Peggy Sue Got Married, married you guys fans is this in

the hall of fame what's it's kind of a harder movie to see these days I think if Valley Girl is yellow then Peggy Sue got married has to be yellow too they seem like they're kind of in conversation to me in this like era of Cage's career ultimately I think they're probably gonna like some of these are gonna get nixed out but I consider it in similar esteem, I think. Oh, I love the performance. I love the crazy little voice. It always gets me. Peggy Sue. So it's a supporting role,

and I feel like it's going to get squeezed out, but I feel like it has to be a yellow. Valley Girl is a supporting role too, but it's his big thing i love the movie but i feel like it's gonna get squeezed out but it's yeah and you're gonna and these this next run of films it's tough it's like it it's this is tough this i'm looking at it right now between 87 88 up to 90 93 when he kind of it's tough it's about to get pretty tough here okay this is this this is where the the gauntlet begins 1987 raising arizona hi mcdonough auto in right lock it in yeah yeah has to be arguably the best movie he's been a part

of total classic love his performance as the human wile E. Coyote. That was basically the cue that he got in terms of how to act. 1987, also Moonstruck. He plays Ronnie Camareri. Rewatched Moonstruck last night. Fuck. Great movie. That is the proverbial they don't make them like they used to, where I'm like,

this movie is just weird enough, but just mainstream enough to click in a way that it feels like very few things click right now. The fact that this was like a hugely celebrated box office hit Academy Award winning movie but it's so strange

and Nicolas Cage is giving the performance he gives in this movie wonderful piece of cinema. Is this the most charming Cage performance? Because he's full Cage but he is super charming

in this movie and in like a it's mostly a Cher movie and he's kind of coming off the bench like Steph Curry a little bit but it works

in such a huge big way I mean just his introduction in this is legendary I agree the whole sequence in the where he's

talking about his hand and the bread his life and it's just incredible stuff Moonstruck I think has to be in because this is a huge one it's just a gigantic film Moonstruck, I think, has to be in because this is a huge one.

It's just a gigantic film and like a signature film of the time, so you can't leave it out. 1988, Vampire's Kiss. Now, this is in the conversation for craziest Cage performance of all time. Vampire's Kiss, there's an entire feature about this film on TheRinger.com,

which I encourage people to read. Cage plays a character who is attacked by a vampire and thinks he's become a vampire, but maybe he has not become a vampire. It's also a very odd tone, like late 80s kind of tone for a film. Cage is, this is where he is

experimenting with the limits of his craziness. Van, Vampire's Kiss kiss i just remember that was a big deal that like he ate a roach yeah remember that yeah god damn pretty gross you know what i mean like i just remember this movie being a big deal because of that uh i wouldn't have it in it this started to be i remember the you, I was old enough to remember the headlines just around how weird and out there the movie was. But it's just not, it hasn't endured as a Nick Cage movie that people need to watch for a long time. But it just kind of shows you kind of his career, even the ones that people don't talk about and ones that you still kind of have to talk about.

But no, I don't, I wouldn't have it. But see, I do think it's endured as a Nick Cage idea. And it's like Nick Cage as artifact. This is his most memed, most clipped,

most deranged performance in a lot of ways. And it's like, it really is like they made one movie out of one big cage freak out. And it just keeps getting wilder and wilder as he basically he basically goes like full nosferatu over the course of this movie um spoiler alert the vampire is the patriarchy but uh i honestly i saw this as clips first and then i saw the movie and i was i was kind of impressed at i wouldn't say subtlety, because again, this is a man who puts in fake vampire fangs to attack people. But there's more here than the clips would suggest, than like your

favorite Nicolas Cage compilation on YouTube would have you believe. I think you nailed it, Rob. It's like secretly kind of an interesting movie and an interesting performance, even though it's super outlandish. I don't think it's going to make the cut when we're comparing it to movies like raising arizona and moonstruck um 1988 a small movie called time to kill not a time to kill the john grisham adaptation a completely different time to kill um what man what are we doing the grisham pod soon uh we have to talk about the overall uh the overall humidity level in the time to kill we have to talk about the overall the overall humidity level in Time to Kill we have to spend hours

I'll earmark that it's the wettest movie that's ever existed this Time to Kill is not wet nor is it good it's going red Wild at Heart tough one I feel like this one's going to get cut and I'm preemptively just saying I really love this movie maybe it's not getting cut but we have so

many more films to get through so I feel like we should make it a yellow. Okay, yeah, let's... We'll table the conversation for now at yellow. But like Cage and Lynch together? I know. And Sailor Ripley dancing to heavy metal in the first 20 minutes of the movie. That's some great... And then singing Elvis.

Academy Award nominations that come out of this film. It's not a little thing. It's a big movie. It's a big movie, yeah yeah big movie okay 1990 not a big movie firebirds this is a uh cheap top gun knockoff the cage made never seen it there are some movies here that i've never seen and this is probably the first hall of fame we've ever done in which a an actor or a filmmaker has multiple movies i've never seen we're going to get through the list later in these later years i haven't seen a bunch of these movies but firebirds safe to say not in the hall of fame also 1991 zandali another movie i've not seen anybody seen this one nope no and the

interesting thing about zandali is that it's straight to video how did that happen how did that happen at that point in his career that is a a little nuts. You'd never see that. You know what I mean? Really strange. 1992, he's back in mainstream movies. Honeymoon in Vegas, man. You already made mention of it. This is a movie that I think people have a lot of affection for. That is a fairly mainstream romantic comedy.

Directed by Andrew Bergman. Andrew Bergman, I think of The Freshman, right? The Marlon Brando film. Is this in the whole... See, I think of The Freshman as a Matthew Broderick film. Well, sure. Both are true. Honeymoon in Vegas, is this in?

It means something. The movie means something. It seemed to be a solidifying movie in a way and it's a movie that everyone associates with him and it's a movie that everyone talks about with him it's got the the weird elvis thing that he gets into it it the movie means something i can't off-handedly just like exclude it. I don't know if it's going to make it. And remember also this movie gives you top tier,

top tier Sarah Jessica Parker, you know, for me as a 12 year old guy at that time is it meant something to me. Um, just settle, settle down, Ben. Hey,

Hey, Hey, it was a moment. You know what I mean? Uh, but no, to me, it's one that kind of solidified him as a guy who could be at the center of a pretty successful movie and hold it down because this is a more wide audience type movie

that he's in and that people love. But is it a Hall of Fame movie? I mean, I haven't seen this one, so I'll defer to you guys on that. I don't think so. I don't think so. I just love it so much, man. It's a fun movie. We can yellow it, but we're probably not coming back to make it green.

1993, Amos and Andrew. Amos and Andrew. Do you remember when this happened? This was very, very goofy. Sort of a satireire sort of a black comedy sort of a riff on the sitcom Amos and Andy but really more of a riff on the Defiant Ones starring Nick Cage and

Samuel L Jackson produced by Gary Getzman the man who a lot of licorice pizzas life is based on you'd think that this movie from the guy who wrote something wild the incredible Jonathan Demme movie would be a hit a fascinating interrogation of race in our country um and it's not uh stupidest movies i've ever seen before in my life i was so excited it's like it was one of the stupidest this is nicholas cage and samuel l jackson you think that this is

going up it is a dumb movie i'm not gonna lie yeah it's pretty bad it's out uh red rock west now this is one i think rob when you and i were talking about this we were talking about the early you know maybe underseen cage flicks i cited this one for you did you get a chance to track it down i did and let me tell you this movie is is sick. Awesome. Like, this is really good. And, you know, Cage already got to do the Coen Brothers thing with Raising Arizona, obviously. This is basically like Blood Simple, but with Nicolas Cage. And let me tell you, directors out there, you want to make a version of Blood Simple with your favorite actors in it, I will watch it. And I will love it.

It's a great formula every time. And this, like, Cage's performance in it is really good. It's much lower key. It's much more simmering than you're used to seeing from him. He plays, you know, this is kind of a plug and play Cage description, but a drifter who's looking for honest work and gets roped into something bigger than him. But that just means it's a really well-earned explosion

when he finally does pop. It's just like a great boiling kettle kind of movie and i loved it i really enjoyed watching this one i think i think it's got to be at least yellow i would put it in my hall personally wow strong case fucking not making it what you're going the weatherman over bedrock west yeah first of all like i'm not first of all first of all this is the way I do a Hall of Fame for me I don't do it based upon like how good the movies are

like that's to me that doesn't to me Hall of Fame has to do because a lot of these movies like look there are some films in here that I think are the best Nicolas Cage films that I don't think that people are going to agree with me, like my personal favorite movies. No one is going to associate this film with Nicolas Cage.

It's just over the course of his career, him as an actor has become this thing. And his Hall of Fame movies can't just be good. They also have to be meaningful in a way. They have to mean something in the course of a career that's spanned this long and i just don't think that this movie does it's a really good movie i just don't think that this movie means anything in terms of being a nicholas cage film i get it though but but look you need to be true no van you need to be true to yourself i don't want the wikipedia summary of cage's career i want a hall of fame of great

movies and great performances. Well, he has too many for it just to be that. We literally have a hundred movies to watch. Can we yellow it for now? We're yellowing it. Red Rock West is a great movie, and I encourage people to check it out. It is an extremely good neo-noir. Speaking of 1993, Deadfall also comes out this year,

another sort of neo-noir not as effective not going in the Hall of Fame 1994 a trio of non-crazy movies from Nick Cage Guarding Tess a comedy about a secret service agent protecting a retired first lady a sort of ex-first lady

It Could Happen to You a remake of a beloved romantic comedy starring Bridget Fondaa and trapped in paradise a famed flop co-starring dana carvey and john lovitz now i think all three of these movies in a weird way solidify nichols cage as someone who is not leaving hollywood anytime soon as as sort of like part of the wallpaper of movie stardom but i don't think any of the three of them are in any any objections to these three no no i would like to say right now that i love trapped in paradise though

i think if you were like 12 or 13 when you saw trapped in paradise you thought it was great and if you were 29 and reviewing films you were like this is one of the worst comedies of the decade and there's a fascinating there's so many examples of this throughout the 90s. All the film critics reviewing comedies in the 90s just did not get how I was feeling sitting alone in my basement.

I'm just going to put that out there. For this era, my general rule is if you could replace Cage with Tom Hanks or Steve Martin or Jeff Daniels and it's basically

the same movie, I'm just not interested. And there's kind of a similar principle in play later with Liam Neeson. Like if this could be a Liam Neeson late period Cage movie, whatever, you know.

I love those rules. That's actually a brilliant way to do this, Rob. Okay. 1995, Kiss of Death. Bill Simmons and I have threatened doing this film on the rewatch book many times. I don't know if we'll ever do it, it is a batshit movie with a a batshit performance um is it in the hall of fame uh no it it the the the movie is absolutely nuts though and it's like a it's it's like a a jackson pollock of a film with all of these different colors

sprayed onto it and your brain is trying to figure out which shapes are the most dominant ones but it's hard because there's so many colors that they're throwing up there and you when you step back from it you end up going the whole thing is fucking this has got like top tier crazy fucking sam top tier crazy fucking nick top tier fucking crazy fucking Caruso. And Nick in this movie is something different. He's this big meat heady, kind of almost thick, heavy, tatted up, fucking guy. And it's, it's really, to be honest with you, a cage that we never kind of quite got again like he was in this movie.

So I love it. I love the film. I don't think it's going in his Hall of Fame. I agree with you. It's a lot of fun. This is another movie that a lot of people haven't seen in the last 20 years or so. It's a remake of a 47 noir.

Incredible cast on this movie. Caruso, like you said, at the height of his sort of post NYPD blue moment Sam Jackson Nick Cage Helen Hunt Ving Rhames Stanley Tucci Michael Rappaport Philip Baker Hall it's directed by Barbette Schroeder the director of Reversal of Fortune it's really really it's it's kind of not good honestly as a movie um the script is really bad uh which is a script by Richard Price the great Richard Price. I mean, it's a movie that on paper,

it's one of the greatest on paper movies ever made. And it doesn't totally come together, but I love the way that you described it, Van. There's something splatteringly beautiful about it. 95, Leaving Las Vegas. We've talked about it a couple of times already. He won Best Actor at the Academy Awards. So this is an automatic in. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No debate. Not a movie that you're going to sit down on a saturday night to watch but that's that's i know when you and when you were talking about it man that's the thing is that it is not rewatchable it is a painful movie in so many ways and part of the performance that he gives and elizabeth shoe gives it's just hard to watch these people spin out and down um into this downward spiral and so it maybe doesn't have the cultural weight that it did at the time at the time this movie was a huge deal it was fucking massive it was like a it was a it was a you gotta

go see it yeah it was a you gotta go see it this performance but there are times where they're like stepping on broken glass and like just just like it's just a tough one to to to watch the pimps and you know working girls and everybody is at their wits end just a real commentary on the human experience but uh he just brought it he nailed it he withered away into the academy award we're not even out of the 90s here and we we have three greens and eight yellows so we're not not doing well, guys. We're on track for the 30 movie pool, I think. Okay, 1996, The Rock. Oh, yeah. Hall of Fame. Yeah. First

ballot. It's in. Yeah. No questions asked. The Rock is sick. 1997, Con Air. I say yes. I say yes, too. I say yes, man. Do we want to have a hard Con Air conversation now or later? Let's have it now.

God damn it. Go ahead, Rob. You know what? You are Scott Foster. Have it right now. Fucking movie makes $224 million. Have the conversation right now, Rob. This is a really good movie, but it's the third best batshit action movie he makes in this two-year stretch

and i'm just gonna like we have 10 spots i'm trying to be a realist about it it's more of an ensemble cast than it is like a cage dominant movie to me the rock and face off are co-headlining this era and uh this one is is coming up third and it's really good but shit i'm putting red rock west in this over come on you put a red rock absolutely absolutely jesus christ bro i watched i literally i literally watched con air three times last week like red why i'm serious like con air was just it's playing and it's one of those films and by the way i disagree with the fact that it's more of an ensemble cast really it is a cage movie it's definitely got it's a big action movie right so it's got a top tier john malkovich villain

turn oh john malkovich could have done this whole thing he could have been an amazing lex luther they never did it i would say hey let's don malkovich let's look there everybody wants to get off the jesse fucking eisenberg years later bullshit but uh but it but in this film nicholas cage is the action beefcake dude more than he's been in any other movie right he's He looks great, long flowing hair. He's an army ranger saving the day on a plane full of fucking convicts. John Cusack is on the ground

the whole movie. This is Nicolas Cage's movie. This is his deal. Rob, come with me on Con Air. It's fantastic. A plane crashes into Las Vegas. Dave Chappelle gets thrown out of the side of a plane.

We don't even care about him anymore. This was years before he made controversial stand-up comedy. This movie is a force of nature. One of the best trailers I ever saw when I was in the theaters. And then when we went, we were going nuts inside of it. It's fucking con air, Rob. What are you talking about? Look, it's got to be yellow. It's got to be in consideration.

I'm just saying when the rubber meets the road, it's going to get kicked out. That's what's going to happen. It's con air. It's green. I will find every print of Red Rock West that exists, and I will burn the movie alive a thousand times

before I allow you to tell me that red rock west is going in over con air sean god damn it shades of batman over batman returns here i'm just i'm feeling some energy i'll be honest with you rob me and rob this is our buddy comedy this is i'm serious this is amos and andrew right here here's the thing i i also re-watched con air this weekend i absolutely loved it i thought rob's case was pretty persuasive man jesus it's the it's the number three movie out of the this tree at this triumvirate of action masterpieces it's the it's the least good i mean we're talking john woo and michael bay versus west you know jesus we're we're gonna hold on yellow okay absolutely yeah we're gonna hold on fucking John Woo and Michael Bay versus Simon West. Oh, Jesus.

We're going to hold on yellow. Okay? Absolutely. Yeah, we're going to hold on yellow. That doesn't mean we're done. It means it's probably done, but maybe not. And we can have the forces of the... I shudder to think what Shea Serrano would say if he knew we were having this conversation right now.

He would be not happy. John Woo's face-off is automatically in. Castor Troy, you've already sung the praises awesome movie incredibly get in there um 1998 city of angels what if i was just like city of angels is in guys no debate i wouldn't trip what was the theme song from city of angels wasn't it a huge hit it was the google dolls oh right of course yeah it was the google dolls yeah i wouldn't trip Yeah. I wouldn't trip if you said that. Listen, you guys, we're doing this thing that like, and we're doing this thing that movie guys do

where we're forgetting the moment. Like, I feel like we're doing it. So The Rock, Con Air, Face Off. So I'll just go back to this one time. So all three of these movies are big deals. The biggest moment for Cage to me is probably Con Air because he was the headliner in that film. The other two films that you're talking about is Cage and Sean Connery and Cage and another guy who was super hot at that time, John Travolta. Con Air is his action movie.

City of Angels is his romantic deal with meg fucking ryan like you know what i mean like the the queen of hollywood cute and this movie is just a big fucking huge deal when it comes out we're also the number one song in the country if you said it's green i'd be like yeah it's in there if you look at this run of films i know you're right he's the he's the he's one of if not the biggest star in the world during this this run of films right here until he decides to make eight millimeter as they fuck you to the whole industry but but but but i'm looking at this and you just kind of kind of it gets taught hard but it's going to get easier in the next decade this decade is fucking hard you know you're right i feel like it has to be yellow at least this movie made 198 million dollars holy shit it's a 200 million dollar romantic come on guys

it's a remake of wings of desire the vim vendors movie they made 200 million dollars that's absolutely wild anyway okay let's go to snake eyes now snake eyes is not in but snake eyes is fucking amazing and i'm gonna say it one more time. Snake Eyes is great. I've said it many times. It's considered lower tier Brian De Palma. To that, I say no. One of the most incredible acts of movie making of the late 90s. Really, really exciting movie that all takes place in one night at a Las Vegas arena where a boxing match has happened and a crime is taking place and a government conspiracy is

unfolding and a hurricane happens. All of that, all in one night. Amazing movie, Snake Eyes. I'm not going to try to make the case for it because I might have to make the case for some more stuff down the road. Very good movie. 8mm is a movie.

Is it a good movie? Van, you would say yes? Yeah, of course. It's certainly a transgressive film. You and Chris and Bill spoke at length about it on the rewatchables. Yes. Yes. Uh,

too much to the chagrin of the rewatchables audience. Um, they, they were saying this is not a rewatchable movie and it's, and I can't deny that it's hard to watch the first time. So maybe the second or third time. Um, uh,

I love the movie. I'm not going to say that this movie should be in the Nicolas Cage Hall of Fame. But it is just fascinating journey into the underbelly of Los Angeles. It's almost like a bizarro version of the big picture or the player that takes place on the top most elegant levels of los angeles even though the player is you know about some kind of shady shit this one is about the seedy underbelly of los angeles that rarely gets covered in a mainstream hollywood film and i thought it worked a lot okay it's out i'm sorry i think unfortunately bringing out the dead might have to be out his one collaboration with martin scorsese What do you guys think about that? Of course it's out. I think Yellow.

Okay, all right. I'll let you rock with Yellow. It's a really good performance from Cage. God damn it. It's a good performance. That movie's not in. Oh, you know what? Fuck it. I'm just saying this.

Since I watched it, I cannot get this movie out of my head. And I think it's because it almost works in a way that's really interesting. It's probably going to get cut, realistically. Yeah, I think if it were made by someone else weirdly it would have been more in its favor because because it's the the fact that it's it's scorsese in the afterglow of movies like casino i think maybe that's kind of held against it but let's we'll hold yellow for now i think gone in 60 seconds is also probably just yellow a movie that was a big hit at the time that people thought was a lot of fun very stylish kind of empty movie but a cool looking uh car theft movie that um if not for fast and the

furious maybe you would have a bigger reputation in the culture but i feel like fast and the furious has completely blotted out the memory on this movie so fucking fun it's a very fun turn on turn it on giovanni ribisi it it's uh like delroy robert duvall who robert duvall delroy linda who shockingly apps and all this movie stuff that we do we just the delroy linda erasure is just top tier for former guest on this podcast i'll have you know delroy and i spoke in the year 2020 delightful conversation what a great guy um yeah okay 2000 rob's favorite movie the family man um rob this is not in no absolutely not um but it is it is interesting sean you mentioned earlier that cage has worked so

long he ends up in every genre every kind of movie this is almost like an the opposite of peggy sue got married plot wise um and so i guess if you work long enough you also do the inverse of every movie you've ever made too. It's a good call. It's sort of like his memento and his inception all at once. 2001 Captain Carly's mandolin. One of the funniest jokes in unbearable weight was at the expense of this movie.

This is a romantic drama starring Penelope Cruz in which Nick Cage learned to literally play the mandolin and it is not in the hall of fame not at all and you could tell when they were making this it's like one of those movies to where like you can look at every frame of the movie and look at what they were trying to do yeah you're like oh they thought they fucking were they nah just nah it's not in the Hall of Fame so in 2001 we also get a voice performance in christmas carol the movie a film i have not seen but certainly not the last of the voice performances for nick cage nice fun way for movies start to make money is to show up doing voice work in these animated flicks 2002 wind talkers a reunion with john woo if i'm not mistaken and not a successful film and i think

not a film that's going in the hall of fame. Fair to say? Yes. We're officially in the down period, but it doesn't last long. This is the start of the down period and he has a bounce back here and has a few more years of relevance. 2002, he also directs his first movie, Sunny, and he has a small part as Acid Yellow in the movie. This is a movie about a young

male hustler. Not in the Hall of Fame, guys. No, not in the Hall of Fame. I think in Otto Green is Adaptation. What do you guys think of that? I think so. Rob? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, holy shit, this whole movie, but

I would say this is probably his most transformational performance, the most unrecognizable cage because otherwise he's kind of himself to varying degrees. This feels something different, like it's anxious in a way that he's kind of himself to varying degrees this feels something different like it's anxious in a way that he's just not in other movies and it's great like this movie i did a triple feature with this uh with wild at heart with mandy and my head is i'm still trying to get my head screwed on amazing you took a yeah dude you're on fucking dmt i like like yeah like it's crazy i want to get a big

picture film festival going one of these days might have to wait 10 years or so but if we are ever able to do something like that i want you to program nick cage night rob because that's that's high energy i love it uh so he's nominated for an academy award for adaptation it's definitely going in one of the best movies really of the century. Honestly, it's an incredibly creative film. 2003 is Matchstick Man, a movie that I've sung the praises of many times on this show. I'm having a hard time making the case for it,

even though I think it is a widely admired performance in the grand scheme of things. Is this anything more than a yellow at this point? What do you guys think? See, my thing is this. In my opinion, Matchstick Man is better than Red Rock okay it's like why are we comparing everything to red rock west is my question you did this this is a precedent that you set okay see i would i would say matchstick man is better than con air is what i would say it's definitely better than con air but better better doesn't mean that it con air is bigger and when you're talking about

we're talking about a movie star like nick cage better matters and bigger matters too the ridley scott fucking con man movie this is a fucking great movie like this is like this is a fucking great movie and so i a fucking great movie. And so I feel like it might not make it at the end of the day, but it at least has to be a yellow, right? Yeah, this is borderline green for me. I think I would say it's actually green. I'm going to be honest with you.

I'm willing to go out there. I would say it's actually green. This is a fucking great film, but I get it. Well, Sean, at what point in her life do you think you'll teach your daughter the art of the long con i think is the question probably right around the time she leaves home and attempts to trick me into thinking that she isn't my daughter but is my daughter uh it's a spoiler alert um hopefully she never leaves home i've decided alice will be living in my house for the next hundred years this is what parenthood does

to people uh yellow matchstick men 2004 national treasure now not my favorite but hard to deny how beloved this movie is and what a genuine jerry bruckheimer action hit it is i find it significantly below that trio that we were talking about before but this movie is you what a genuine Jerry Bruckheimer action hit it is. I find it significantly below that trio that we were talking about before, but this movie is, you know, got a sequel. It's got a big place in the pop culture consciousness. Our producer, Bobby Wagner, cited this is the first Cage film that he ever saw, which makes me feel

even older than when Rob started sharing his memories. Is National Treasure in? To me, yes. Oh, God. Jesus Christ, man. started sharing his memories is national treasure in to me yes oh god and jesus christ man to me yes look you cannot like we have that is the big, huge Hollywood blockbuster four quadrant film that like everyone loves and talk, talks about and kids still watching school.

Like you just can't fucking do a move. You can't do a Nicholas Cage rewatchables and say that national treasure, a $350 million grossing film, that I certainly did not expect to be good. When I sat down in the theaters to watch it, it was strictly off Nicolas Cage Allegiance that I was there. And the movie is a good movie

that makes a shit ton of money. I don't see how you leave it out of his hall of fame it's a green to me a green not even this is green national treasure is a green national treasure is a green the nicholas cage hall of fame national treasure is a green six greens already this this is like if we were making a television hall of fame and you're like ncis gotta be in there lock it in the populist appeal it's gotta be in hold on for a second yeah so we would make a television hall of fame and we would discount the movies that the television shows that people actually watch no but i'm saying like big bang theory isn't a green into the television hall of fame

the big bang theory is fucking definitely a green into the television hall of fame the big bang theory is fucking definitely agreeing into the television hall of fame are you nuts point point of order hold on hold on geeks in the freaks and geeks in there but you're gonna leave out the one film that ever the one show that everybody watches you guys have really put your finger on the difficulty of the hall of fame because i have not clearly defined it for you and so i love that you're on two opposite sides, the critically acclaimed and the much seen and much loved. The truth is it's both. It's both.

And so we have hard decisions to make. And frankly, we have 50 more films to talk through. So I need us to power through this conversation. National Treasure for now is yellow. It might become green. Lord of War 2005, a movie I like a lot, but I think we can all agree is not in the hall of fame yes no i love it though but no it's not it's very good i love that movie though um

the weatherman okay i'm gonna let van make it yellow for now and i don't know if it's gonna last but we're gonna keep it moving the weatherman is fucking great though yeah uh this is where the wheels come off so he does a voice voice work in 2006 in the ant bully a movie that not a lot of people have seen not the best title for a movie i've ever heard the ant bully 2006 he also makes world trade center with oliver stone a fairly muted film like a i think a very sincere movie very well-made movie not a great movie but quality um that's not in the hall of fame and then the wickericker Man, you mentioned Vampire's Kiss earlier, Rob, as the most memed performance, but the bees in the Wicker Man, also a remake,

Nick Cage has made a lot of remakes, the bees might be the most seen Cage meme of all time. And there's no way this movie is in the Hall of Fame, unless you want to say that the Wicker Man meme is in the Hall of Fame. We have want to say that the Wicker Man meme is in the Hall of Fame. We have made exceptions in the past to include non-performances and individualized moments or talk show appearances or podcast appearances. Any case for the Wicker Man or the Wicker Man meme? It can be in the hallway when you're walking into the Hall of Fame. Right. You know, various artifacts from his career.

It can be there. That's fine. I don't know i mean the wicker wicker man is not going to make the hall of fame but if we're just talking about all-time weird kick you in your nuts punch you in your guts fucking like that that movie is a fucking trip it's crazy it deserves it deserves mention that's what i'm saying i i agree just the idea of Neil LaButte coming off of your friends and neighbors and in the company of men to remake

a British folk horror film with Nicolas Cage. Wild times. We didn't know how good we had it in 2006. 2007, we didn't have it good. We had Ghost Rider,

which is not good. When's the rewatchables takeover happening with the midnight boys for ghost rider van it's never happening but we are going to do uh something we call midnight mulligans where we go back and we look at some of the worst movies in comic book history and we decide on whether or not they were actually that bad. Okay. Midnight Mulligan. We're giving every movie a Mulligan.

And Ghost Rider would have to be in there. And its sequel. Ghost Rider didn't suck for a theater movie, but it's not a great movie. No, it's not. He's not a bad Johnny Blaze, I would say. He's good as Johnny Blaze. It's just before we understood the ingredients

that it took to make a compelling comic book movie work, I think, to the level. I mean, you had comic book movies that worked. You had the Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2. But for the most part, the formula wasn't put out there yet in how to make these movies palatable to everyone. It was a boss office success, though. The movie made a lot of money. But not the best point of its career to me. What are you going to say, Rob?

Oh, just as an olive branch to van while while we're on the subject of superhero movies you were right about the first x-men but thank you i i agreed with that as well um very funny cameo from cage and grindhouse as as fu manchu and the werewolf women of the ss trailer that's not going in the hall of fame though i watched the film next for the first time this weekend. The Lee Tomahori action movie in which he can see the future just a few minutes into the future.

And it was quite a bad movie, guys. This movie is not good. I was surprised by how bad it was. I know that Nick Cage has made some stinkers, but sheesh. Also in 2007, his fourth film of the year, National Treasure Book of Secrets. This is the sequel

to National Treasure, and it is not going in the Hall of Fame. Can I just cite, though, for this moment, that Benjamin Franklin Gates is the name of this character. Benjamin Franklin Gates.

Well, I just want to point out that this is Cage's highest grossing U.S. movie, so I think it's got to be in the Hall of Fame if we're going by those metrics. We're not going by those metrics. It's not true.'s got to be in the Hall of Fame if we're going by those metrics. We're not going by those metrics. It's not true.

It has to be in the Hall of Fame if it's a high grossing and good movie, Rob. Well, then also throw out the First National Treasure. The First National Treasure is a good movie. It's a good movie.

Nice try, Rob. We need Pardon My Movie Take with Rob and Van. I think that would be a good show. I think that works as well, yeah. Guys, Bangkok Dangerous, 2008. Not going in. Now we're going to move very quickly through this.

I want you to know, okay? 2009, Knowing Van. I thought you were very kind towards Knowing. I thought it was okay. It's better than some of the other movies he's made in the last couple of years and better than some he'll make in the near future. But it's not in the Hall of Fame. he's made in the last couple of years and better than some he'll make in the near future. But,

uh, it's, it's not in the hall of fame. It's not in the hall of fame. I think it's, I think it's an intriguing movie. I like it during this time. I was working at a place called cinema,

cinema, cinema. And where, where I was like, uh, had to watch all of these movies and transcribe them. Whoa. So, so, so like for like for like so i'm watching all of these films and

nicholas cage which is beating my brain in with some of these asinine terrible films that were coming out and knowing shocked me i was like actually transfixed with them so yeah uh okay continuing on through 2009 g force he has a vocal performance as, I think, a gerbil in space. That's not going in the Hall of Fame. He also does some vocal work as Dr. Tenma in Astro Boy. Not going in. Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call, New Orleans. Now, this is a tough one.

Definitely one of his best performances in an interesting movie directed by Werner Herzog. A sequel to the Abel Ferrara movie from the early 90s sort of but not really I don't think it's in but I kind of want to give it a yellow I feel like this was one he does this every four or five years where he's like don't forget that I'm the fucking man don't forget that I'm really good

and I can make an interesting art film with a great auteur yellow yeah absolutely that's a that's a that's a that's a chip for rob fan doesn't give a shit about this movie uh i mean i like the movie but like it's it's not going to it's it's i mean i like the movie it's we're giving it a yellow because it's good it's forgettable like it's it's they strap a camera to an iguana yeah come on nice um okay 2010 kick-ass huge hit uh he plays

big daddy you know supporting role here but a role that gets him back in the center of hollywood because this is i guess it was exciting that a little girl was like cursing and punching people in the throat um i don't think it's in no Sorcerer's Apprentice is absolutely not in. We go to 2011. Season of the Witch, not in. 2011, Drive Angry. I kind of like Drive Angry. It's a good movie.

But it's not in. It's fun. It's not in. 2011, also Seeking Justice. Never seen this film. In fact, I've never heard of it. Also 2011, Trespass, a very bad thriller not in also 2011 ghost rider spirit of vengeance this is the ghost rider sequel also not in that's one two three four

five films in the year 2011 in which he is the star of all of them and they're all bad yes we're in the doubt this like what is it what is what's this what is uh uh does henry say in goodfellas these are the bad years yeah well and i didn't know i didn't feel safe until i uh walked out of the thing got these are the bad years this is not changing anytime soon because in 2012 he makes one movie called

stolen it's also not good and it's not going in in 2013 he does voice work as grug in the croods which was a big hit and a good look for him but it's not going in in 2013 he does voice work as grug in the croods which was a big hit and a good look for him but it's not in the hall of fame right he's also in a movie called the frozen ground in which i think i think he

plays a detective investigating a serial killer in alaska and i haven't seen this movie um this is uh also in 2013 the film called joe from david g Green, another one of those movies where he's like, Hey, just in case you forgot, I'm still a good actor. I still work with good filmmakers.

In fact, David Gordon Green with a funny cameo at the very beginning of unbearable weight of massive talent. But that movie is not in the hall of fame either. I'm going to keep going very quickly through this guys. Hang with me. 2014 rage. Never seen it. 2014 outcast.

Never seen it. 2015 left behind. Never seen it. All three are out. Also Never seen it. 2015, Left Behind. Never seen it. All three are out. Also that year, Dying of the Light. Wait a minute. Whoa. Hold on.

Hold on. Is Left Behind from the Christian... What the fuck? Hold on. I remember that was Kirk Cameron's shit. How did it become Nicolas Cage's shit Kirk Cameron was you never saw Left Behind, Tribulation Force

they used to make us watch it in church where it was like it was the rapture, have you guys seen these movies no Nicolas Cage did a Left Behind I'm watching that shit tonight I never I did not know that this had

happened. I'm sorry. The movie holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. We need to re-edit this pod with you singing the praises of the Left Behind film. Just text me, okay? No, I won't, but I didn't know that he had done that. I completely missed him. They got Jordan Sparks in this movie.

What? What the fuck is happening? Okay, my bad. Fresh off our American Idol win. Yeah. In 2014, he also makes Dying of the Light, the movie with Paul Schrader, which was chopped up quite a bit.

Rob and I were chatting about this ahead of time. Apparently, the actual version of this movie that Schrader wanted to release is quite good. I've never seen it. 2015, The Runner. I don't know what that is. 2015, Pay the Ghost. I don't know what that is 2015 pay the ghost i don't know what that is have you guys seen any of these movies am i just no no no okay this is nothing nothing until snowden i haven't seen any the trust never seen it doggy

dog is a movie that actually was made with schrader as well with willem defoe that is actually a lot of fun it's not a hall of fame, but it's a really grimy crime movie that the two of them made. And they have a sweet little partnership, Schrader and Cage, but that's out too. Snowden, I don't remember Cage

being in Snowden. I did see it in a movie theater. Was he good? Does anybody remember? I don't, but I saw Snowden though. Okay. That's tough for him

that we don't. This is a rare supporting performance from Cage in a mainstream movie from a big director. We don't remember a thing about it. He's also in USS Indianapolis Men of Courage, which is a rare supporting performance from Cage in a mainstream movie from a big director. We don't remember a thing about it. He's also in USS Indianapolis, Men of Courage, which is a film.

Army of One, also a film. None of these movies are going in. 2017, Arsenal. I've not seen it. Vengeance, A Love Story. No. Inconceivable. No.

These seem made up, these titles, honestly. Mom and Dad, I did see this one with selma blair did you guys see this this is like the zombie kind of parent one right yeah pretty fun this is not this is not bad now 2018 super interesting mandy mandy's come up a couple of times already this was i think the beginning of the cage assance it was a uh incredibly psychedelic film directed by panos Cosmatos about a man who's trying to rescue his kidnapped wife,

who's played by Andrea Rasbarro. This is a beautiful and insane movie with a beautiful and insane performance by Cage in it. Is it in the Hall of Fame? Yellow minimum is what I would say. Yellow minimum, I put it in. And the only reason why is because

I think that when you're telling a Hall of Fame situation, you also have to tell a story of the athlete or you have to tell the story of the actor. And Mandy is just too central to Nicolas Cage's story. And so that's the reason why. I always think story. That's why I would have Valley Girl in as well. But Mandy is central to the story of nicholas cage and so i would put it in i like that yellow yellow yellow minimum but i would say you have to have it he gets back to con you know it's all about him again for a second yep it's the it's the latest

i know and it was the movie that it was billed as i know know he's been bad. Like they could have said this on the poster. I know he's been bad for five years or for four years, but you have to see Mandy. And that's how everybody sold it to me. And I saw it and I liked it. I loved it, actually. It's a really great movie.

If people haven't seen it, they should check it out. Also that year, a ton of movies that no one else has seen. Looking Glass, I don't know what that is. The Humanity Bureau, 211.

He voices Superman in Teen Titans Go to the Movies, which is a funny in-joke for those of us who know scene looking glass i don't know what that is the humanity bureau 211 he voices superman and teen titans go to the movies which is a funny in joke for those of us who know that he was almost superman in a tim burton adaptation um he was superman they fucked it up i would i would like to see that movie um i don't know who would have been great but it would have been an interesting stupid but it would have been fun though yep uh he also He also, that same year, voiced Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. That was a great moment when it was revealed

that he was the voice of Spider-Man Noir. That was... Spider-Verse is sick. Between Worlds, I don't know what that movie is. He plays Joe Majors. It's not in the Hall of Fame.

We're heading to 2019. A score to settle. Not in. Color Out of Space, I mentioned to you both. Not in. Yeah. Probably the most successful movie of this year for him. Running with the Devil, not in. out of space i mentioned to you both not in yeah probably the most successful

movie of this year for him running with the devil not in kill chain that's also sounds made up uh primal no grand isle no moving to 2020 jujitsu that's not in it's a fun it was a fun little film to watch like when i when i finally happened upon it during the pandemic though i don't think i saw jujitsu who's his counterpart in that one uh aliens right yeah but it was like it was it was uh it was a fun little movie to watch during the pandemic when you were just going around going what haven't i seen let's watch let's go you know i mean let's see if we can watch every rick moranis movie let's see if we can watch every martin short movies i just picked the actor during the pandemic it's like let's see if we can watch every Martin Short movie. I just picked the actor during the pandemic. It's like, let's see if I can

watch all their movies. Every six years, an ancient order of expert jujitsu fighters faces a vicious race of alien invaders in a battle for planet Earth. The film was a box office bomb

grossing less than $100,000 against a budget of $25 million. It's not great, guys. We're getting down to the end here. The Croods and New Age. That's the sequel to The Croods. I did watch this. It was fine. It's not great, guys. We're getting down to the end here. The Croods and New Age. That's the sequel to The Croods. I did watch this. It was fine. It's not in the Hall of Fame. Prisoners of the

Ghostland, the Ciancino film that premiered at Sundance, not in the Hall of Fame. Willy's Wonderland, a riff on Chuck E. Cheese and the madness that happens inside one of those places, not in. Then we've got Pig and the Unbearable Wait. Now, these two films, I feel like like are cappers on the

Cage return. I really liked Pig. I thought it was one of the few times in the last 10 years that Cage has turned down the energy in a performance in a way that has worked. I don't think it's a Hall of Fame worthy movie. Anybody want to argue with me on that?

I don't have a green enough light for this movie and this performance. Like this, this is a lock for me. Wow. I was a little concerned about revisiting it, to be honest with you. And I say that mostly because I wasn't sure how much of my initial reaction to it was going through everything we did in the 18 months before it came out and finally being in the recess of a pandemic and finally being back in a movie theater.

And all that was primer for a pretty emotional experience the first time. out and finally being in the recess of a pandemic and finally being back in a movie theater and all that was primer for a pretty emotional experience the first time and i have to say i re-watched it this movie's just sensationally beautiful in a way that nothing cage has ever made otherwise is and uh it's so composed in what it holds back and how it's made and i almost i'm almost hesitant to talk about it too much uh not because there's like spoilers in any conventional sense of that word, but it's just so delicate in what it's building that it's, it's antithetical to cage in some ways in what we expect of him and in the other performances he's had.

But this is, this is a miraculous movie. No. I saw that. Really? It's like like it's like it yeah it's good it's really good i mean it's good but like you know you know what fuck it rob you got your green you know like you're like you're you're yeah rob you got your i don't know sean i wouldn't i't... It's a minimum yellow to me. But Rob, you just... I feel for you, man. You're the best. I want you to have this.

How about that? I want you to have this. It's not for me, though. I'll put it to you like that. But thank you for driving me around and helping me look for my pig, is what I'm saying. Yeah, I got you.

Yeah, I got you. It's not for me, though. Well, if we make it a yellow and we don't put the unbearable weight of massive talent in, which I don't believe we should. Does everybody agree with that? Yeah, we're not going to put it in.

That gives us an even 20 yellow and green. I believe we have 2, 4, 5, 6. 6 greens and 14 yellows. yellow and green. I believe we have two, four, five, six, six greens and 14 yellows. Which means we have to What are the greens again? The greens, to recap,

Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, Face Off, and Adaptation. I feel good about that. I feel good about the greens.

Yeah, well that's the easy part, Rob. This is the hard part. Yeah. We gotta cut 10 movies okay we're gonna do it we're gonna do it quickly i'm gonna start naming yellows okay valley girl probably has to go i mean i say i'd say it's a i'd say it's a green i say it's a green but it's it probably has to go i'm gonna be real with you i think it's the green, but it probably has to go. I'm going to be real with you. I think it's going to. You got it, Rob. It's just eclipsed by Moonstruck. And honestly, same for me with Peggy Sue Got Married.

Like, Moonstruck is a better version of that version of Cage. Agreed. Wild at heart. In for me. I mean, it's, you know, I almost want you to read down the list of yellows and then us come back. Okay, okay, okay. Let's do that.

Wild at Heart. So we'll just say Peggy Sue got married and Valley Girl are out. But starting from Wild at Heart, Honeymoon in Vegas, Red Rock West, Con Air, City of Angels, Bringing Out the Dead, Matchstick Men, National Treasure,

The Weatherman. That's not making it, I'm sorry. Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans, The Weatherman. That's not making it. I'm sorry. Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans, Pig, and Mandy. So, here's what I think. Wild at Heart, Con Air,

Mandy, and then I'll let you guys choose one. Just give me the remaining ones again because I have Mandy. I have have Mandy I actually don't have Wild and Hearted but I understand it being in it's among my favorite I have Wild of Heart Con Air give me the

other ones again Honeymoon in Vegas I can't make it that's not going in Red Rock West Rob I'm sorry City of Angels which I just can't feel good about cutting good movies for City of Angels I'm sorry I just can't even though about cutting good movies for City of Angels. I'm sorry, I just can't.

Even though your case was really strong, Dan, that it's like it's a huge hit and he's in the middle of his up period. Bringing Out the Dead, I think it's a second tier for Cage. Matchstick Men's

an interesting one because it's such a good performance. National Treasure is a hard one to turn away because of its success. The Weatherman, I'm sorry, is out. Is it?

Bad Lieutenant is out. Well, we're out. Go ahead and shit on National Treasure. Mother fucker, you. I just got to say, I don't really see what everyone is seeing in this movie as far as being a really entertaining romp. We may need to get an official ruling on it from kevin clark but to me it's just like peak dad movie in a way that i don't necessarily love uh i would say 50 of it is people relaying u.s history facts to

each other and if that's how you want to spend your time at the movies bless you but it is not the way i want to the first of all you're not wrong like you're not wrong hey did you know that daylight saving times was invented by whatever whatever you're not wrong but it's just it was a cool movie and a movie that had really never been done before in that way every time we would do some sort of exploration type of archaeologist type of movie we always go to some foreign locale we're in north africa we're in ancient mesopotamia we're in all of those places the movie actually did that here in the united states and made u.s history uh you know the fucking fucked up history sometimes kind of like this weird intriguing indiana jones type of deal and i thought that it was pretty cool in that way and audiences did too because it made nearly 350 million dollars so

not as much as the second one though this is a tough spot guys this is the actual philosophical debate because if we include Wild at Heart, we include Con Air, and we include Bandy which I think we can probably get on board with those are two great art movies with incredible performances

and then a big fat hit that is kind of hard to dispute then we're choosing between either one more hit which would be National Treasure or i don't know what matchstick men is that what's or red walk oh i'm gonna be honest with you if it's between if it's between national treasure and matchstick men it is a fucking figure four leg lock for me it's hard is if those are the two movies, I like Matchstick Men way more, way more than I like National Treasure. It's not even close. But if I'm being objective, it's just difficult to exclude his, like, the biggest movie he was in from the decade.

I know you say the sequel made more, but that's just sequel buzz. The sequel made more based upon how good the first one was and not how good the sequel was. It's just hard to take his biggest movie out of the decade out of it, but I can understand why people would. I'm being all serious right now. I really can't. I guess I'm going to be the decider here, huh?

So is Pig just straight up out at this point? I'm sorry, Rob, but it's out. It's Mandy or Pig, and I feel like Mandy is more important to the story. here huh so is pig just straight up out at this point i'm sorry rob but it's out it's it's mandy your pig and i feel like mandy is more important to the story okay pig is very good and it's beautiful the relationship that you have to that film and it sounds like you have a pig of your own that you are caring for which i think is nice um i'm going matchstick man i just think it's a better i just think it's a better movie and a better performance and you know what let the National Treasure heads come for me John Turtletaub

he's okay but like is he Ridley Scott no he's not here I'm going to read off the 10 films I think we did good Raising Arizona Moonstruck Wild at Heart Leaving Las Vegas The Rock Con Air and Face Off Adaptation Matchstick Men

and Mandy. Rob doesn't like it. I mean, I'll live with it. Con Air over Pig doesn't sit great with me. But Rob, like 180 people have seen Pig. Yeah, you can't, like, you can't. Pig, come on, man. You're right.

Let's get Croods 2 in there. Guys, this is it. We did it. We built it. We don't feel good about it. As usual, we're torn we're frustrated uh we made some big mistakes people will be uh coming at you both on social media i encourage you to engage in those conversations in civil ways thank you for all of your

intellectual rigor was that was that serious in civil ways you know me i can't do that i know you you fire back you are i don't understand how you do it you literally will quote two people and be like are you fucking serious so let me say one thing before we go one thing before we go there are going to be national treasure people that are going to be out there yeah i wrote for national treasure but i'm gonna be honest with you i can i can understand how national treasure doesn't make it and you have to look beyond yourself guys benjamin franklin gates you have to look beyond yourself to see how national treasure doesn't

make it okay national treasure city of angels somewhere meg ryan is looking at this she's like i can't fucking catch a break these days. You know what I mean? She just can't catch a break. Noted Meg Ryan, big picture listener. Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah. She's listening and she's like,

I can't fucking believe I'm getting this shaft again from these guys. All right, listen. Thank you guys very much. Van, congratulations on publication of your book. Rob, congratulations on three more full months of NBA playoffs that you're going to be covering on Group Chat,

Bill Simmons Podcast, and elsewhere. You guys have something special going on. I just want you to know that. And I'm really glad to be a part of this burgeoning

frenemyship because it's very special. Well, man, anytime you want to come over and watch Red Rock West, I got you. Popcorn's on me. Yeah, we'll do a whole thing.

You come over and I'll come over we'll do a whole thing you come over and I'll come over and watch Red Rock West you come over and we'll go beat by beat through national treasure and after we do it

we'll go out and try to find these treasures in our country thank you so much to Van and Rob. Thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this podcast. Stay tuned.

Later this week on The Big Picture, we will finally be diving deep into Nightmare Alley. See you then.