You hear a lot about Nicolas Cage these days, and most of the time it is not flattering. Mr. Cage has gone downhill so rapidly that we sometimes forget that he’s actually an Oscar winner and was once, long ago, a very good actor.
Today, Cage has signed on to play the lead in Lost Melody, a love story about a man and a prostitute.
Lost Melody is being directed by Terry Zwigoff (Bad Santa) and produced by Edward R. Pressman (American Psycho, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans). The story, such as it is right now, concerns a man trapped in a bad marriage who falls for a prostitute. We assume that Nicolas Cage plays the man and not the prostitute. Although, that could be really interesting.
Pressman has described Lost Melody as a ‘darkly-funny drama in the tradition of such classics as The Blue Angel and Sunset Boulevard.’
I’ll let that first one pass, since one would be hard pressed to describe The Blue Angel as funny, darkly or otherwise. But the comparison to Sunset Boulevard intrigues me. That film has just the kind of crazy that Cage does very well – if he can channel Gloria Swanson, I think we might have a movie.
I honestly want to see Nicolas Cage make good movies again. He’s had some great ones – Leaving Las Vegas, Raising Arizona, Adaptation, Bad Lieutenant – but in recent years he’s become more a punchline than an actor. In film after film we’ve gone to laugh at Cage, not with him. Maybe doing indie work will help him break away from the sheer awfulness of films like Ghost Rider and Season of the Witch. Working with Zwigoff, who has been responsible for some dark and irreverent films – Ghost World and Crumb among the best – might very well bring back the Nicolas Cage that we should really remember and celebrate.
What do you think of Lost Melody? Does the project sound appealing to you?
