Interview with Nicolas Cage, star of Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans was a surprise hit at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, and about a year ago I did a phone interview with the film's star, Nicolas Cage.

As most right-thinking moviegoers should know by now, Cage can be a gamble at the best of times, and in the world of pulp he can be especially testing. The recent Drive Angry was one of his better efforts, the rightly derided Wicker Man remake easily one of his worse; luckily, his Bad Lieutenant director – maverick Bavarian Werner Herzog – knew how far to let Cage stray along the path of derangement.

As is usual for a phone interview, I was handed over to Cage by a steely corporate PR robot who suggested – in light of Cage's colourful private life and recent troubles with the tax man – that I might want to keep the conversation to the movie. Well, perhaps she was a little more blunt than that. What she actually said was, “Hi! I have Nicolas for you. Um, just a quick reminder: please keep it focused on the film. Um, if it varies from the film I'll have to... cut you off. Alrighty?”

(I loved that “Alrighty?”.)

The funny thing is, the film is riddled with all the things that one is never supposed to discuss in interviews. Indeed, if you've see Bad Lieutenant, a loose, in-name-only remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 Catholic guilt trip, you might be convinced that everyone involved was on drugs. You might even wonder if you were on drugs.

In the movie, Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a recently promoted policeman working in New Orleans. Due to a back injury, McDonagh has a reliance on painkillers that stretches to illegal drugs – and he will do anything to get them, both for himself and his beautiful high-class hooker girlfriend (Eva Mendes). But where Ferrara's film – which Herzog claims he has never seen – was a ridiculously serious meditation on guilt, Herzog's film is two things: a really rather out-there and outlandish comedy and a very, very twisted film noir.

This conversation took place on 9 March 2010...

Hi, Nic!
Hi!

How are you?
I'm good. How are you doin'?

I'm fine. If you don't mind me asking, where are you? Are you in the US?
I am, yes. I'm just here for some, uh, press, uh, that I had to do in Los Angeles.

How did you first get together with Werner Herzog?
First, I wanted to work with Werner having seen his movies as a very young man. My father was a fan, and also I'd met Werner when I was, like, eight years old at Francis's – at Coppola's – house, at a barbecue. I remember Werner being in the back of a car and showing me and my cousins his tattoo of a skull with a top hat, on his arm. And then I'd seen Aguirre, with Klaus Kinski, and I was a fan of that, particularly because of Kinski's performance. Then, back in the early 90s, there was a chance that we'd work together on a movie about Cortez, the dictator-explorer, but I was living in Los Angeles at the time and, for whatever reason, I just didn't wanna play Cortez, because I grew up around Los Angeles, y'know, which, predominantly has a lot of Mexican, uh, folks here, and I didn't want to be the face of Cortez in Los Angeles. (Laughs) So I decided not to do that. And then I didn't hear from Werner for several years.

And what happened then?
Somebody called me – I think it was my partner, Norman Golightly, at the time – and he told me that Werner Herzog wanted to do a remake of Bad Lieutenant and would that be interesting? Well, of course, when I spoke with Werner, he didn't even know the original Bad Lieutenant, didn't see it as a remake or anything of the sort, he just liked the idea of doing this movie about a cop who has these problems. We spoke briefly, and I could tell that he was a very confident man. Uh, I then got the idea that we should shoot it in New Orleans, and then one thing led to another very quickly. But it was a go. It didn't take any time to make the decision, y'know. I very much wanted to work with Werner. I wanted to have... [Pause] I wanted to see if I could have that relationship, in a positive way as opposed to a negative way, that he had with Kinski. I know he was very frustrated with Kinski, although I never really heard Kinski's side of the story, I only saw the documentary [My Best Fiend] and whatever Werner shared with the rest of the world. But I felt that that relationship between the two, whatever difficulties Werner may have had, definitely led to great work. So I was trying to figure out a way where I could challenge Werner with my performance. But hopefully in a peaceful way.

Did you see the script before you committed yourself, or did you simply trust Werner?
Er, no, I always need to see the material. I do trust Werner, and I would happily work with him again, but I do need to see the material to know that I can do something with it. Um, it's not always the case – we don't always have the luxury of finding hot-point material as actors, because we're still very much at the back and call of the powers that be, the movie gods, as it were, that give us offers or scripts, and we have to work.

Werner told me that on the second day of shooting you asked, “Why is this guy so bad?” And he said, “I don't care about motivation – it's about the joy of evil, the bliss of evil.” Do you remember that?
I remember him saying the movie was about the bliss of evil. I don't remember me questioning him, why is this guy so bad? That's not something I would say – why is this guy so bad? I had a very clear idea of where I wanted to go with the character. Although I must say that Werner's point of view on the bliss of evil is what makes the film work. Because it's so delicious for audiences to enjoy vicariously this cop doing all the things that we know we shouldn't do but we think about doing. And the presentation that Werner – particularly as encapsulated by those three words, “bliss of evil” – is what gives the movie its marvellous tone. Now, I was going at it from another perspective. I was having fun with it, I was definitely laughing on my way home from work sometimes, but I also felt (sighs), and this may be going around it the wrong way, that I also wanted to show the ugliness of the drugs and that I didn't want to glamorise it. I wanted [my character] to be kinda hard to watch at times, and my face would get screwed up at time from the grimaces from the coke and from the... whatever else he was putting in his body, and the exhaustion from lack of sleep. So it was important for me that he became almost like a grotesque, like a modern but degenerated Richard III of New Orleans, The whole thing with the back, with the twist to the back, was just me trying to call up a little bit of Richard III.

How hard is it to play being on drugs?
That was really difficult. I mean, I didn't know that I could do it, so it was a huge challenge for me. Uh, I... I.. I.. thought of it as an impressionistic point of view, like a recall. Of whatever may have happened in my past from 25 years ago, where maybe I had, like, a lost weekend, and then I tried to recall that. But that was pretty distant, and a very faint memory. So then I would meet with different drug counsellors and addicts and just ask them questions about it, ask them questions about behaviour. So then I carefully graphed out where the more speed-like substances, like coke, would give him that feeling of invincibility and that fast talking, and sort of these lip-smacking sounds, and tics, and swallowing, with the dry mouth. And then when the heroin, or the downer drugs, came into the body, it became much more slow, and the speech became slower, and the blinking became slower...

Did you get any directions from Werner?
Y'know, he wasn't as caught up on that as much as I was, because I guess that was more my responsibility. The problem is, for me, some scenes were shot out of context and then put together out of context, so even though I had graphed it... Where [my character] definitely was talking fast, because he had done blow, sometimes there would be a shot where [Werner] had put me, y''know, having just done heroin. And that threw the arc off. But I don't think it's too noticeable. One of the things I was going for, and that people were commenting on later, was the sort of odd nasal sound. Well, that's something that I realised, because I had known people in the past who, when they'd done cocaine for three or four days straight without sleep... [his voice becomes higher] then it starts going into THAT sound, where it's all blocked up and the whole voice changes... And so that's where that was coming from. But some people thought, Why is Nicolas Cage sounding like Richard Nixon all of a sudden??? (Laughs) Even that's interesting too, if that's what they wanna take from it!

It's interesting that Werner is so completely anti drugs. I didn't expect him to be pro drugs, but he's almost innocent on that subject. Did you find that?
Yeah. I think Werner likes a good drink at times, but he doesn't seem to abuse it, and he swore to me that he'd never had any experience with drugs. And I think it's good to be anti drugs. I mean, I clearly don't think drugs are the way to go, and they cause many problems for people and their families, so it's kind of exciting to see someone who's that creative and that imaginative not having dabbled in any of that.

How difficult was it for you on your co-stars? The scene I'm most curious about is the scene with the two old ladies...
Well, I got on very well with those older women. We had a few good laughs, They're local, in terms of New Orleans, and one of them knew of me before, because I've lived in New Orleans off and on throughout my life and had participated in some of the Mardi Gras parades, so they knew they were safe with me. But they like to play too. They're actresses, so they like to play scared. Um, it's true that he shot the scene two ways, because the editor – and Werner – thought that when I put the .44 Magnum to the African-American woman's head in the scene that it was a little too intense, and over the top, and frankly quite ridiculous. But in my opinion, that was what made it... y'know, exciting: he'd gone over, into the deep end. In that city, especially. In the history, from, y'know, the Civil War and whatnot, I thought it had a kind of iconic symbology to it that somehow made sense on other levels, And I wanted to express that as well. I always felt we had room to go as far as we needed to go. I never felt that that I needed to put a lid on it. People call it over the top, but I didn't see it in those terms. I was trying to be completely open to my imagination in this case. And I feel that you can be that when you have things like, er, drugs or... (sighs) ...other issues that may descend upon people, um, that can open those odd doorways of behaviour.

Do you surprise yourself in those scenes?
I do choreograph them, I do write it down. I'll make notes. I'll score it, just like a composer would, and I'll start rehearsing it in my hotel room or wherever I may be and get ideas of where I want to go, and if I need to add a few bits of dialogue to support the melody I'll do that. Um, I find that Werner, if I express an idea to him, very quickly he might shut it down. But if he sees it in action, if he sees it, then he goes with it, with full enthusiasm. For example, he didn't like the idea, when I first said that I'd like to fire my gun in the air when I'm having the sex scene with the girl in the parking lot. He thought that was completely wrong. Um, predominantly because he thought a million people would show up, but the truth is, people shoot guns in the air all the time and nobody shows up. (Laughs) But for me it added a really nice percussive beat. It added a bit of timpani to the scene, and he got it when he saw it. I was very happy with the way he ended the scene on that, because it actually went further, into other areas that I thought were perhaps more grotesque, but this way it was still kind of flashy and dramatic.

What about the scene where you keep shouting “To the break of dawn!” Is that something in the script, or is it something you just threw in?
Yeah, that was just something I thought was funny. I was with [co-star/rapper] Xzibit, and we were all having such a good time together. I got along great with all the African-American actors, we had a lot of laughs and it was just lot of fun working with them, but I've heard rap songs where guys'll say, “Aw... to the break o' dawwwn...” Y'know? (Laughs) It just cracks me up. So I thought it was funny that, here's this white guy, like, riffing with them and trying to speak their own language in some way. Like, the line was blurred between black and white in those moments, where they're all high together, just goofin' off. But there's also a level of tension as well. And I wanted to show that this cop, Terence, could actually function in that environment and be accepted in that environment, and also almost be like a friend: y''know, making jokes, when he's high on crack, about Eazy-E and things like that. That just sort of came out…

Did it ever work the other way round? Werner introduced the iguanas and the dancing soul scene. Did you ever look at him and think, What are you doing?
No, I loved it. I loved it whenever Werner went into a direction that I had never experienced before. I was excited. I remember once, he said to me, “Now, Nicolas, I'm gonna tell [the actor in this scene] that his soul is still dancing, and you're gonna shoot him, shoot him again, because his soul is still dancing.” And I was so excited. I said, “Werner. this is wonderful, this is exactly what I was hoping for, because this is like when you go up into the cosmos...” And he looked at me and went, “Shut up.” (Laughs) I think he doesn't believe me, or perhaps he thinks I'm being sarcastic, but the truth is, I was genuinely excited. And with the iguanas I was genuinely excited. I think he likes to be a little bit provocative, and he tries to push my buttons, because he'd say things like, “The iguanas are the best thing in the movie, and I have to cut your scenes out because I need more of my iguanas. Don't make me not have the iguanas...” So it was like, “OK, Werner, just cut the whole scene in the parking lot out where I have sex with the girl and I shoot the gun and... (laughs) ...you'll have all the iguana time you need.”

Did you ever see Abel Ferrara's movie?
Yeah I did, and I really like it a lot. I think Abel Ferrara's movie is excellent. Although I particularly like his King Of New York. But Harvey is great in it, and it's just a very powerful, original film.

The ending of that film is very downbeat, very bleak, but the ending of your film is fun and it's almost quite optimistic. How do you see it?
This is a perfect example of one being more of a Judeo-Christian program, where a man is dealing with enormous amounts of guilt and actually seeing visions of Jesus Christ and trying to cope with his wrongdoing, whereas in our film it's more of an existential experience, where sometimes people who do the wrong thing actually get rewarded. And he wins. And that also happens in life.