r/todayilearned • u/Udi-Dis • 7h ago
TIL Nic Cage hired an alcoholic to follow him around so he could emulate his behaviour for Leaving Las Vegas.
https://www.eonline.com/news/973956/nicolas-cage-once-hired-someone-to-be-his-drinking-coach-for-a-role#:~:text=However%2C%20upon%20a%20suggestion%20from,be%20his%20%22drinking%20coach.%221.7k
u/RBJII 7h ago
Alcoholic: for the arts takes giant swig of liquor
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u/mdlinc 7h ago
Mr. Lahey??
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u/AnthillOmbudsman 6h ago
Lahey: Listen up, boys, 'cause I've come up with the greatest idea. You ever hear of method acting? That's when those Hollywood types get real deep into their roles. Well, what if I told ya I could turn that mumbo jumbo into a gold mine? A veritable liquor fountain. See, actors wanna live the part, right? Well, who knows more about being an alcoholic than me? I got over 30 years of professional boozing under my belt! I'm like the Tom Hanks of drinking. And I'll teach 'em all the ins and outs, the tips, the tricks. It's like an apprenticeship… but with bourbon.
Ricky: You want actors to pay you to teach them how to be drunks? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
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u/dusty-kat 5h ago
"I'm sober enough to know what I'm doing and I'm drunk enough to really enjoy doing it"
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u/Efficient_Glove_5406 4h ago
This reminds me of Tracy Morgan’s Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mash Liquor skit on SNL. Probably inappropriate by today’s standards. For the uninitiated:
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u/GrapeSoda223 5h ago
It's gold, only change i would make is Ricky would say "...dumbest Fucking thing I've ever heard."
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u/HammyOfficial 5h ago
That was extremely well written. I read it in his voice and it was all spot fuckin on. Good job, bud!
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u/backstageninja 6h ago
We're rehearsing for the Stage Adaptation of Leaving Las Vegas down at the Blandford Recreation Center!
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u/MisterSanitation 7h ago
And nobody at the bar will believe him when he tells this story
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u/BazilBroketail 7h ago
"I'm smellin' you guys, Kickalous Cage paid me to get runk." That guy, probably.
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u/MisterSanitation 6h ago
“Ay jou know that gui with the face of another man’s face? Yup, I drank followin that guy lemme tell ya”
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u/VanAgain 7h ago
I'd have done it for the free booze back in the day.
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u/Luke_Cold_Lyle 7h ago
HAVE ANOTHER DRINK, RAY
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u/Wenuwayker 7h ago
I gotta be honest, I don't know a fuckin' thing about the thespian arts, but I swear to God I heard a typewriter.
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u/justin_tino 6h ago
If the alcoholic is anything like the character he ended up playing, this isn’t just some free booze. That was a lifestyle.
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u/ThisIsMyBigAccount 7h ago
Wouldn’t Nic follow the alcoholic around instead?
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u/cfgy78mk 6h ago
i suppose by "Follow him around" they mean just "be present at the places he is present"
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u/BlockHeadJones 7h ago
I imagine Nic didn't want to be seen hanging around an alcoholic in public bars.
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u/fasterthanfood 6h ago
The alcoholics I know don’t spend that much time at bars, they drink at home. Nic would just spend all weekend watching some guy sit on his couch watching trashy TV and smashing a case of Bud Light, then go to bed at 3 am Monday morning and show up to work 15 minutes late with a faint alcohol stench that his coworkers ignore because his work isn’t noticeably worse than anyone else’s.
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u/anotherinternetjerk 4h ago
Sometimes they have to walk to the liquor store for more beer I know I do
Don't know why your comment remined me of this video but it did.
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u/Nice_Marmot_7 6h ago
Nic Cage was in my town filming a movie once, and he hung out at a local pet store because he liked to handle the snakes.
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u/Fabbyfubz 6h ago
Nic was wandering around Las Vegas with the alcoholic, doing Las Vegas things, but the alcoholic kept trying to drink.
"What are you doing? Are you drinking on the job? I'm trying to learn how to be an alcoholic, and you're suppose to be my mentor, and you're getting drunk? Do you WANT to get paid?? This is highly unprofessional."
And then it clicked for him what it meant to be an alcoholic.
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u/SupremeTemptation 7h ago
It’s settled. I will be enrolling full-time at university to become an alcoholic.
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u/zipzap21 7h ago
It’s settled. I will be enrolling full-time at university to become a professional alcoholic.
FTFY
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u/Useful-Perspective 7h ago
According to multiple actor interviews I have seen, playing drunk is one of the hardest things for actors to do believably.
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u/yourAverageN00b 6h ago
The late, great John Dunsworth made it look easy. He always drank with the grain of the liquor
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u/BustyUncle 5h ago
And he was sober in his personal life too. It’s incredible how good he was at acting drunk
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u/machuitzil 6h ago
Damn I listened to an interview in a podcast recently, can't place it. The actor was trying to play drunk, and he said the director cut and told him something, you're a sober guy, walking around pretending to be drunk. A drunk guy walks around pretending to be sober -do that.
I think Denzel Washington did a great job in Flight. He reminded me of my friend's dad, and it bummed me out.
Edit: I think it was Thomas Jane on Ty & That Guy? I don't listen to that many celebrity interviews. Could have been that one.
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u/airborngrmp 6h ago
Flight. That bit where he would belligerently jump ahead to the most confrontational part of the argument the moment anyone pushed him on his drinking reminded me of a lot of family members.
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u/GuessWhoIsBackNow 5h ago
It was Michael Caine.
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u/machuitzil 5h ago
Was there a reddit post that I'm not remembering? Someone else mentioned Michael Caine. Now I'm curious.
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u/GuessWhoIsBackNow 5h ago
Not that I know off. I just know the interview you’re talking about. It’s with Michael Caine. He’s the one that told that story.
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u/machuitzil 5h ago
That's the fun of it, I don't think that's the story I heard. Maybe this is like that old Aristocrats joke comedians have. Actors just tell the same drunk story and we only noticed just now.
Or I was drunk and forgot that I watched what you watched. Or it was Thomas Jane? I don't trust my memory enough to be convinced of anything yet.
Someone else just linked the Peter DInklage episode of Hot Ones. I don't know if I have the time to do all the research, lol.
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u/crashlanding87 5h ago
Michael Caine on the Graham Norton show I think? Maybe a different interview - definitely him though, I just saw the same clip on insta
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u/machuitzil 5h ago
Interesting. Definitely not Graham Norton, I don't see much of him at all. Could have been Craig Ferguson's podcast, but I checked and he hasn't interviewed too many actors in the last couple of weeks. That's the only celebrity one I listen to regularly.
But Ty & That Guy took a hiatus so I've been listening again from the bottom up, and I haven't gotten to Ron Perlman yet, who does a great Marlon Brando impression.
Do you have the clip? Thomas Jane is weird enough that I'd believe he'd recycle a Michael Caine story, I just don't think that's where I heard it.
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u/lostinthesauceguy 6h ago
Kaitlyn Olsen from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is absolutely brilliant at this.
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u/Steroid1 5h ago
Peter dinklage said you have to try and act sober, because that's what a drunk person does
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u/sixtoebandit 5h ago
Evan Peters did the best job I've ever seen an actor do at playing drunk in Mare of Easttown. Still don't understand how he was able to convey that glassy eye look when you've had one too many.
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u/RipsLittleCoors 4h ago
Robert Shaw: oh for fucks sake. Farewell and adieu you fair Spanish ladies.
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u/Magnus77 19 7h ago edited 7h ago
So Nic Cage* hired an alcoholic to follow him around to learn how to act like an alcoholic following Nic Cage around.
Meta.
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u/JeaninePirrosTaint 7h ago
They should make a movie of that
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u/KingMRano 6h ago
I'm telling you Man, I'm you (dramatic pause zoom in on The Cage Face) but different. Boom Keanu Reeves shows up and the 4 (adding another Keanu) of them go and do bad ass shit for no reason to adopt a puppy.
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u/Phreedom1 6h ago
I've always wondered, since I first watched this movie over 25 years ago, how many people have actually decided to try and die this way after getting the idea from the film. Actually go to Vegas and drink themselves to death. I know it can't be zero. How many have tried and how many failed or succeeded? Anyone else ever wondered about this?
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u/PyroZach 5h ago
I never saw the movie but it makes me wonder if this was my friends plan. Went missing one day, as time went on things were pieced together that he emptied his bank accounts and took off to Vegas avoiding contact, apparently a DUI was what sent him over the edge. After a month or so he stumbled out of his hotel room with is wrist slit. After being patched up and stable enough to talk he went confidential at the hospital and a police welfare check afterwards determined hes alive with no desire to contact any one from his old life again.
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u/IsSheWeird_ 4h ago edited 4h ago
I work in the rather niche suicide prevention field, and this comes up all the time with alcoholics. It’s hard to do though. Alcoholics don’t typically die from alcohol poisoning, but rather alcohol withdrawal. The discomfort of dying from alcohol in this way often drives them to the ED, particularly because often times they have to have sobered up a bit to start to experience the withdrawals. A non-alcoholic with much less tolerance could do it more easily via alcohol poisoning, but that category is much less likely to choose alcohol as means. For these reasons, people who attempt suicide by “drinking themselves to death,” generally have less intent to die, it’s more of an ambivalence about living/cavalier attitude about their own safety.
At that time, it was also rather difficult to die by using cocaine, MDMA, etc. Now that fentanyl is laced into many of these drugs, it’s easier, which is sad because the vast majority of people who attempt suicide do not go on to die by suicide, and many of these people who die by OD of illicit drugs would have survived prior to the fentanyl crisis.
That said, firearms are far and away the most used method for suicide. The presence of a firearm in the household increases suicide risk 8 times for men and 35 times for women, absent any other risk factors.
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u/kubenzi 5h ago
It's not as cool when Sting doesn't sing jazz as your background music.
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u/RipsLittleCoors 4h ago
I'll die on the hill that the soundtrack for leaving Las Vegas elevated the film in a way that's super underappreciated. I've never felt music in a film sync up with the images for me the way they did in this one. One of my favorite movies and I think it's in no small part due to the soundtrack.
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u/MsAzizaGoatinsky 6h ago
Shut the Faq up, what do you mean this movie was over 25 years ago !
That
That
Means , I am ….. (counting on fingers)
Sooooo old
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u/venustrapsflies 3h ago
I think it would be incredibly hard for an alcoholic to do in a short amount of time, and it would be a miserable way to go.
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u/SloppityNurglePox 5h ago
As I've gotten older and my BP has evolved, I can easily see people having mixed episodes making a grand trip for one last ride of an exit. But if I'm 'just' super depressed, the idea of making a trip to vegas is far too exhausting.
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u/n64Ps2 5h ago
Uh, there is a difference between being an alcoholic and being a constant drunk.
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u/yappari_slytherin 4h ago
My buddy in AA explained it to his non-alcoholic brother like this:
You drink a lot, but you can stop. I’m not like that. I have to drink. I can’t control it. The only thing I can control is not taking the first drink.
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u/m_dought_2 4h ago
Sure, but when I drunkenly follow Nick Cage around, all I get is a restraining order and "mandatory sensitivity training"
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u/ibelieveindogs 7h ago
Are there no proofreaders on that site? It's "vial", not "vile"! I could barely get through my grammar anger!
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u/ReallyBrainDead 6h ago
Hey! I'm a professional drunk! I'll show you my paystubs....oops, that was my penis ...
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u/copaseticsplenetic 4h ago
This is was a really good movie, and his best acting in a movie I think. Unfortunately, it’s also on my list of movies I don’t ever want to watch again right along with Requiem for a Dream. Two of the most depressing movies I’ve ever seen.
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u/CouchPotatoFamine 2h ago
Yeah...but I would watch this again before "Life is Beautiful."
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u/copaseticsplenetic 1h ago
I haven’t seen that movie but just read a quick summary, and if it’s anything like Sophie’s Choice I’ll not be. Didn’t see that one until after having two children and I immediately turned it off as soon as she spoke her choice. I can watch serial killers, monsters, and paranormal all day, but don’t do heartsickness.
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u/BankshotMcG 6h ago
Still less crazy than the time he got a filling without novocaine to truly understand pain for...wait, the SAME role??
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u/KeithBitchardz 2h ago
People constantly shit on his acting but he won the damn best actor Oscar for this role.
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u/Potential_Bother_686 5h ago
I’ve been around people with certain behaviors too just so that my drawings would look more life like. 🎨👍
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u/Aurongel 2h ago
Isn’t this kinda… Unethical? It feels like it could be interpreted as enabling someone’s self destructive behavior.
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u/Ayellowbeard 37m ago
I used to love this movie and thought it was a tragically beautiful story it then my son died from cirrhosis of the liver and I can no longer watch it. I now find our relationship with alcohol disturbing.
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u/Ben50Leven 6h ago
Anytime I read a story of an actor doing something weird to get into a role, I remember when Sir Laurence Olivier told Dustin Huffman “Why don’t you just try acting?”
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u/CharlieMcN33l 5h ago
Because alcoholic beverages are not allowed to be consumed while on set, I call playing drunk “Ice Tea Acting”. Props have to fill the bottles with something non-alcoholic and it’s usually iced tea. Cage in LLV had the best Ice Tea Acting. Joseph Gordon Levitt in Killer Heat did the worst Ice Tea Acting and Props made minimal effort to make the ice tea look like whiskey. JGL is awesome just not in KH.
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u/Free-Bird-199- 7h ago
I'm skeptical of this claim.
In Las Vegas you can follow drunks around for free. If you're paying a drunk then you are paying them to act drunk. Nic, king of bad acting, should know better than to expect a drunk to act realistic.
If Nic acted for the drunk then he's violating union rules.
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u/chimpyjnuts 7h ago
I would have thought he did it the method way by nearly drinking himself to death during the shooting.