So how’s Nicolas Cage like to be called — Nick or Nicolas? Answer: “Either one.”
So this Nickie, everywhere talking up his new flick “Joe,” talked up Tye Sheridan, who in it plays a hard-luck kid: “Totally unaffected young man. Gifted actor. Even his silences were profound.”
It reminded him of his own early days. “My first audition I was underage. Only 15. Even that young I tried to be accepted on ‘The Dating Game.’ I used to love seeing that, and always somehow managed to, although my father said I couldn’t watch it. Anyhow, he wouldn’t let me do the show.”
About his and third wife Alice’s son, Kal-El, age 8: “I’m a regular at- home dad to him — not some movie star. I play with him, go out with him, do all those parent-child things like any other father. I don’t play my old movies. Don’t look to make him see them. Don’t talk about those old days. I intend to maintain a normal, natural home life. I try to look at the future, not the past.
“The same with my Oscar. I’m living today. I’m a parent. I keep the totems away. My awards are safe. But they’re not in my home. The totems are in the past.”
So Cage, who hasn’t been around much lately and won his statuette 18 years ago, how’d he grab onto this today script about friendship, violence, redemption, etc.?
“I received a letter explaining the story. Having read the novel a few times, I loved the script and spent days with those writing it. What happens is, you do or don’t connect with the character. I understood him. He resonated with me.”
Must’ve resonated with others, too, because watching those watching it I saw some 18-foot-tall skinny blond Swedish model stand while some Gulliver even longer than she busied himself zipping up the back of her dress.
Jokes, folks
While scouting Malaysia’s missing plane, the next thing you know, CNN’s going to unknowingly reveal our secret troop locations. Luckily, at the time, Syria’s Assad will be watching “The Simpsons.”
What to look out for
Coming out, Penguin’s “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.” McQueen killed himself before his fashion show; Galliano zapped himself after his anti-Semitism . . . Daniel Radcliffe, in B’way’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan” at the Cort, spent three months in ye aulde sod to gain the correct accent, plus 1 ¹/₂ months in a hospital observing those suffering the malady he portrays. This Harry Potter kid really deserves a four-leaf clover.
Pay attention
May 14’s New York Center for Living. Judy Collins performs; Christopher Kennedy Lawford speaks . . . Book party the 29th for Robert Wagner’s Viking newie “You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age” . . . Skirball Center, man and wife actors Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman host May 4’s Lucille Lortel Awards.
Easter rewind
With the holiday gone, anyone know Ronald Reagan’s Secret Service agent at 1982’s White House Egg Roll was dressed as the Easter Bunny? . . . More Easter. Fie on golf, croquet, Palm Beach’s bocce game had Roosevelt, Churchill, Vreeland descendants,
Harry Benson, who just photographed the queen, Carleton Varney, who just redecorated a palace in Europe. Bocce? With the pinky raised?
Odds & ends
Having already seen his re-created performance in recreated “Cabaret,” Sunday Joel Grey caught 2 p.m.’s Radcliffe opening plus Sutton Foster in 7 p.m.’s “Violet” opening at American Airlines Theatre. Actors not acting watch other actors . . . Apology to Earth’s A-1 party planner Larry Scott, whose name I misspelled. He’s catering June 10’s Shakira, Cissy Houston, Nate Berkus gospel extravaganza. For $1 million a shot, you, too, can hire him. If the bar mitzvah’s in Rwanda, that’s extra. And if I blow his name again, I blow his future leftovers.
From James Pratt: “In my Upper West Side neighborhood. An old white guy wearing an old T-shirt with the words: ‘I’m saving the planet. What are you doing?’ ”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.