Nicolas Cage imbued the new movie “Joe” with his madman brand of antics, wrestling a poisonous “cottonmouth snake with very large fangs” for one scene.
“I wanted to get a bigger fear so that I could get on top of the smaller fear of playing the part,” he explained to stunned reporters at a Cinema Society screening at the Landmark Sunshine on Houston Street Wednesday. “The challenge was not having it bite me, but also spit venom in Tye [Sheridan’s] face. So I had to hold it in a very careful way, and then when I tossed it . . . I was also worried that it would turn around and bite me on my neck.”
Cage called the experience “incredible,” adding, “I felt that I was surfing the adrenaline of picking the snake up, and when I was done with it, I was exhausted.” The film, which centers on Cage in the role of a father figure, has been called a return to more authentic form by critics.
“I am still the same actor I always was,” he explained. “Sometimes I have more abstract and operatic and pop- art kind of visions of what I want to do with a character, more baroque, more Western Kabuki, if you will. Sometimes I want to get to something more . . . where it resonates, feel it without pushing or thinking too much about the outside shape of it.” Later, guests headed to Handy Liquor, where director David Gordon Green celebrated his birthday with a surprise cake along with Jon Stewart, Rosie Perez and Paul Haggis.