Earlier this week, a clip of an old 1989 Nicolas Cage cameo was posted on Twitter and has subsequently racked up over 890,000 views, going viral thanks to the actor’s bizarre performance.
The film, Never on Tuesday , was a straight-to-video release from director Adam Rifkin ( Detroit Rock City.) It followed three people as they are stranded in the desert. It starred Claudia Christian, Andrew Lauer, and Peter Berg, but also had a list of impressive cameos including Cage, Brat Pack members Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson, Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, and Gilbert Gottfried. At this point in his career, Cage had just appeared in Moonstruck , which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
What got people on social media talking wasn’t the impressive cast though, but was Cage’s brief appearance, which lasts less than a minute. In the film, Cage’s character pulls up to the three characters stranded in a red sports car. Cage steps out of the car wearing a large prosthetic nose and speaking in a high voice. He asks if everyone is okay and if he can give them a lift. When they decline, he breaks out into crazy laughter and then drives away.
Entertainment Weekly recently spoke with Rifkin about the renewed interested in the film. He told the outlet that producers Brad Wyman and Cassian Elwes had known all of the actors who made cameos in the film and the three of them convinced the stars to appear in the movie.
“The way it worked with Nicolas Cage is, he was given free rein to do whatever he wanted,” Rifkin said. “That was the caveat. He said he’d do it if he could do whatever he wanted. So, he came, with a big rubber nose, that he wanted applied, and he wanted to play this insane character, which we thought was hilarious.”
‘He came with a big rubber nose’: The untold story behind that insane Nicolas Cage viral clip https://t.co/6Ddrz73luc
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) July 27, 2019
He also revealed that there is a longer uncut version of Cage’s performance which he described as “really really bizarre.”
Rifkin joked that before the clip went viral only the people who worked on the movie and his mother knew the film existed. But, now he’s happy that people are enjoying the scene.
“I actually would love it if lots of different individual clips of the movie were to resurface, because there’s a lot of great moments from the film, and I would love for those moments to be rediscovered,” he said.
Cage hasn’t commented about the film’s sudden resurgence but he is busy at work. He’ll appear in Shawn Ku’s A Score to Settle next month and Running with the Devil in September.
