Interview: Cage & Mendes On Ghost Rider
Date: February 11, 2007
By: Kellvin Chavez
Source: Latino Review
Over the weekend I had a chance to sit down with both Nicolas Cage and the hot Eva Mendes to talk about....Yup
"Ghost Rider." The moment Mr. Cage came in the room he stated if anyone was from Entertainment Weekly, seems he doesn't like them and he explains in detail why. Cage also talks about how he wants Eva Mendes to play
She-Hulk and of course
National Treasure 2. Eva Mendes....Well she didn't really have to say anything, all she had to do was just sit and look smokin' hot!
Below is what both had to say about the upcoming Marvel Comic book movie
"Ghost Rider."
For those of you who don't know what the film is about, the film follows superstar motorcycle stunt rider Johnny Blaze made a deal with the devil to protect the ones he loved most: his father and his childhood sweetheart, Roxanne (Eva Mendes). Now, the devil has come for his due. By day, Johnny is a die-hard stunt rider... but at night, in the presence of evil, he becomes the Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter of rogue demons. Forced to do the devil's bidding, Johnny is determined to confront his fate and use his curse and powers to defend the innocent.
What did 'Entertainment Weekly' do to you?
Cage: 'Entertainment Weekly' hasn't done anything to me. Someone just asked me a question about whether I think comic book movies get a bad rap. Someone mentioned to me that there was a blurb in 'Entertainment Weekly' that said very condescendingly, 'We get a kick out of watching Academy Award winners being in movies that they have no business being seen in.' I thought, 'Well, okay. That's really shallow thinking because they can't get outside their own box.' They don't understand the concept of what I would say is art. You have different styles and you can choose to be photo-realistic like 'World Trade Center' or you can be pop art illustrative. Why limit yourself to one style of acting, and especially when you look at 'Ghost Rider' you see a comic book story structure which digs a little deeper. It doesn't take itself too seriously of course. It's funny, but it's coming from classic themes like Faust with Goethe or Thomas Mann or 'Beauty and the Beast.' It's fascinating to take those story structures and reintroduce people to it in a pop art contemporary manner and a especially a comic book no less. It's just fun and reaches a lot of people, but 'Entertainment Weekly' is the kind of magazine that is very condescending and they think in a very narrow box and they always have. So that's why I would recommend that if you want to really get your information and know what movies to go see I wouldn't resort to that particular publication because they are pretty shallow.
There was a day when movies like 'Star Wars' and 'E.T.' did get up in the top five best pictures and got nominations. Do you think that there will be a time when these types of movies will get back there?
Cage: The deserve to, but the problem is that you have people like 'Entertainment Weekly' who don't want to take the beret off of their head or take the ju tan out of their mouth and stop being self-important and pretentious about only the little art films which I love too, but come on and open your minds. You can see that some very creative people put a lot of hard work into this movie. Kevin Mack, he drew those visual FX brilliantly with his team. It's just a fun ride, a spooky ride, and I hope to see these movies get a little more attention at some point.
The most difficult acting challenge I can imagine is that it's an intimate moment and you both have to imagine your heads on fire while getting intimate. How hard was that?
Mendes: Well, I'm a five year old at heart. I still think that there is a monster under my bed. I'm not joking. It's pathetic and really not cute [Laughs]. So with my imagination I can go there in a second. I actually had the reverse problem. It's hard for me to control my imagination from not going there.
Cage: It's all about imagination and that's what comics did for me as a boy. I read 'Ghost Rider' and I read 'The Hulk.' I liked the monsters. I liked them because I couldn't understand how something so scary could also be so good. It got me thinking at a very early age and I had a lot of rehearsal. I was Ghost Rider in my backyard at eight years old. Nothing has changed.
Mendes: I was Pippy Long-stalking in my backyard.
That transformation scene was so good. What was your barometer in terms of how far you could go, or did the director control that or pull you back? How did that work?
Cage: Well, that was what I was really excited about it. I like the old grand werewolf movies and I've always wanted to find a way to apply my acting in a big bad monster movie where I was transforming into this scary entity. I worked with Kevin with where I thought might go in terms of the physical expressions and he would take snapshots of them. I thought that there would be pain because the skin was melting off of my face, but then maybe ecstasy because the power of the Ghost Rider was surging through me and he was starting to get off on that a little bit and then also sadness about what's happening. So he would download all these different facial expressions into the computer and then I would work with Mark [Steven Johnson] on the day of with the DP as to where the camera was going to go and match my moves with the camera. So it became like a dance, and then wherever I had to go in that private place to come up with this imaginary belief that I was transforming into this monster. But I wanted it to be like an aria. I even wanted his screams to be like music, like an operatic aria.
Your wardrobe in the film, Eva, I'm just going to put it out there, is very cleavage friendly. Is that your normal style?
Mendes: [Laughs] Well, it's obviously not my personal style because I'm as bundled up as you can get today, but yeah, that was a choice that the director and I made as far as the character of Roxanne in the comic book, my character, is very voluptuous, blonde hair and blue eyes, Caucasian. I'm not Caucasian and I'm a terrible blonde and I don't have blue eyes. So I said, 'Well, hey, lets play up my voluptuous nature.' So we did that and in that way we were honest with a real sort of comic book heroine.
How frustrating is it that some people assume that was a digital you with your shirt off?
Cage: Well, I guess on one hand it's a compliment, but on the other hand it's like that was a lot of hard work and it's just being written off as if someone made it digitally. It's a little frustrating.
Mark was saying that not only shooting 'Ghost Rider,' but just in going over the script and working on that character that you were really involved. What were some of the things that you really wanted in there after reading the script?
Cage: Well, it's a deeply personal character and I was trying to find a new way of presenting how he would keep dark spirits at bay. I didn't want him being a heavy drinker or chain smoker. I wanted him eating jellybeans so that he wouldn't invite the devils in and I wanted him listening to Karen Carpenter to help him relax so that he wouldn't invite the devil in with like satanic Goth rock or something, or he's watching chimpanzees do karate instead of 'The Exorcist.' All three of those things I was doing in my own life. I was eating jellybeans out of a martini glass and listening to Karen Carpenter and on the internet watching chimps do karate. I thought that it was funny and we should put it in the movie, but it is also true.
Can you talk about getting your skull x-rayed?
Cage: Yeah, we did all of that. They graphed my skull and so I guess that is me which is kind of wild, but what I really love about this character is that we're all him. We all have human skulls. You've got one. I've got one. We've all got one, and we look at it and go, 'That's scary.' And then after a little while you go, 'Wait a minute. That's beautiful. He's human and he's a total bad ass. He's fighting the dark forces, but he's human.' So it's pretty neat.
Eva, were you happy that your character got to come out with that shotgun at the end and be a little bit of a bad ass?
Mendes: Yes. I was very happy.
Was that in the script when you first read it?
Mendes: No, it wasn't. Mark added that for me. He probably just felt bad because I had major superhero envy the entire shoot. I was like, 'I want my head to be on fire.'
Cage: Well, I have plans for her.
Mendes: That's right.
Cage: I'm working on it.
Mendes: Okay, good. Anyway
Cage: I want her to be 'The She-Hulk.' That's what I'm working on. I've got to talk to Avi [Arad] about that.
Before reading Mark's script did you read the previous one that was much darker written by David Goyer?
Cage: Yeah, it was a good script. Steve Norrington of 'Blade' was directing and David [Goyer] wrote that script and I was onboard for that, but whatever happened the studio didn't want to make it.
And it was much darker?
Cage: Yeah. That also would've been a good movie, but that movie dissolved and then Avi brought Mark in and I talked to Mark, and Mark found a way to make it more palatable to larger audiences. It became more of a spooky ride. You go to an amusement park and you have a roller coaster and you have the haunted mansion. This is just the right amount of scary to get your adrenaline up, but not so much so that you can't finish the ride. It's something for the family.
What was it like working on set with Sam Elliott? You hear that voice and it's so distinct.
Cage: Sam Elliott is an elegant cowboy and I used to be his neighbor in Malibu Canyon. It's funny because we're both from the same place, but he has a much more pronounced draw than I do and he just comes off so screamingly beautiful as this cowboy icon and I think that his performance is so poetic. Every word, every expression, every movement is precise and nothing is wasted.
And what about working with PETER FONDA?
Cage: That was a trip and he made a movie called 'The Trip' [Laughs].
Mendes: And he's taken a lot of acid trips.
Cage: Peter is the reason that I ride motorcycles. I saw 'Easy Rider' and the next day I bought a Harley Davidson and went from L.A. to San Francisco and back to L.A. and became Captain America in my mind. So when they decided to make this movie and we talked about who was going to play Mephistopheles originally I wanted Tom Waitts. That was the hold lamp wick 'Pinocchio' thing, but the studio decided with Mark that they wanted to go with Peter. I thought about it and I said, 'Well, you know what, that makes sense because who better to seduce a stunt cyclist to sell their soul than Captain America, Easy Rider himself.' And we were there play acting together and there was this bike there and there's Peter and he's talking and I stepped out of myself and looked at the two of us and was thinking, 'Wow. This is really cool. This is Captain America.'
Doesn't he say, 'Nice bike?'
Cage: He did, didn't he? Yeah. He does say 'Nice bike.'
Mendes: I have to tell you my little Peter Fonda story because I love this story so, so much. We were hanging out on set and it was me and Peter and a couple of other people and they were talking about 'Easy Rider.' I was like, '****. I didn't see it. I can't be a part of the conversation. I hate this.' So I finally confessed and said, 'Peter, I'm so sorry. I've never seen "Easy Rider." I know that it was a huge deal for American cinema.' And he said, 'You never saw it?' I said I hadn't. So he got a group of like ten people together and we all met up at my director's apartment in Melbourne and he played the movie for me and he sat next to me and I had a personal commentary by Peter Fonda. He would sit there and pause it and say, 'Now, in this scene it was my twenty seventh birthday. Jack [Nicholson] were up for two days.' That's as far as I can go with that, but I mean it was awesome because he was right there with me and it was one of those moments where you're so thankful because it's one of the coolest moments in your life. So awesome. Also, he was very generous too. He's so eager to share and is just a lovely man.
When I spoke to you last you said that you weren't sure you wanted to carry on with a sequel to this. Mark mentioned that there's been some early talk about it though. Can you maybe see a sequel to this now?
Cage: Well, it depends on the reaction from the movie going audiences, whether they're enthusiastic about it and if there is a good script, but I would say that out of all the characters that I've played my interest coincide with where this particular character could go. I'm interested in the metaphysical nature of Ghost Rider and his world. I am a man with an open mind. I don't really know anything, but I'm very interested in the spiritual and the material and that this is the one superhero that walks between both worlds. I think that's pretty exciting because he's new. There is a lot of room for adventure with this guy.
