A24 after a raucous Midnight Madness premiere of Dicks the Musical brought the funny again tonight with the world premiere of Kristopher Borgli’s Dream Scenario, another ode and self satire of Oscar winner Nicolas Cage if there ever was one.
Cage said onstage tonight that Dream Scenario was one of a few projects in his career, that after reading it and seeing it “perfect on the page,” he had to play it; the other titles being Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, and Leaving Las Vegas. The pic follows Paul Matthews, a humdrum professor, who starts appearing in other people’s dreams, both sexually and brutally. Matthews becomes something of a social media sensation, err meme, and that was something that Cage could relate to.
“Well, in the name of Thespis, it was no acting please,” Cage said about the role.
“I felt like I had the life experience,” the Oscar winner continued.
“What had happened to me, I might have been the first actor who woke up one morning and somebody put a montage of me having meltdown moments and freaking out, and cherry-picking from different movies and then put it online, I think it was called ‘Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit’. And then it went viral overnight around the world and I kept looking at ‘What is happening to me?’”
Talking about that video, Cage said, “It kept growing exponentially…nothing I could do, could stop it.”
“I couldn’t stop it legally; I couldn’t stop it anyway.”
“I sat there, and it started going in this memeification, with photoshopping and T-shirts, and I said, ‘I gotta put this somewhere, and then I read Dream Scenario and I said ‘Yes, now I can turn this lead into a little bit of gold!’”
Borgli also the wrote the zany comedy, which is produced by Ari Aster.
The pic hits theaters on Nov. 10.
Check out highlights from the premiere here:
