Nicolas Cage, The Room, and The Internet

The art of doing a bad job

Me and my siblings have a running joke.

Nicolas Cage

That’s the whole joke.

We’ll pull up scenes from his movies, like this one, and play them on repeat and quote them and yell “THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT” every time the ad for that movie pops up on our idle Roku TV screen. And honestly, what started off as an ironic joke is turning into a genuine appreciation. We love this man.

Why?

Let’s be frank, Nicolas Cage isn’t a terrific actor. At best he’s alright, at worst he’s hilarious. And his career isn’t really suffering for it at all. He’s been in a ton of movies and won a bunch of awards (including a Golden Globe and an Oscar). There are so many other actors with years of training and natural talent who probably deserve the kind of work he gets, and could bring a lot more to the roles he plays.

But they don’t get them.

The Room

Another example:

This is a scene from The Room, a film acclaimed for being “the worst film ever”. It’s famous in the film and screenwriting circles because of how terrible it is. It’s a cult classic.

Why?

It’s terrible, yet it’s got the same amount of fame and fandom as if it were a box office hit. If you put together all the video essays and memes and parodies made of this movie, it would probably stretch around the world like five times. There are a ton of other indie films that are actually GOOD that deserve the kind of attention The Room gets.

But they stay hidden gems.

Social Media

Social media opened this door as well by allowing anyone to make cheap content and as long as the algorithm works in their favor, they get paid all too generously for it. Sites like TikTok are making it easier to do less work and steal original ideas that are actually good.

This is such a weird phenomenon! So many actors and writers and artists of all kinds work their whole lives trying to perfect their craft, and then you get people like this who strike gold out of nowhere and become sensations for doing a shoddy job.

Why?

And then it hit me, laughing with my brother at this clip from “Vampire’s Kiss”, watching Nicolas Cage yell his A-B-C’s with all the passion he can muster.

Something doesn’t have to be objectively good to be entertaining. These are two entirely separate standards for a certain thing to meet. You can make this artful statement film with all the themes and symbolism you can muster and the entire audience could be asleep by the second act. The ratio of “objectively good” to “entertaining” might vary depending on what story you’re telling, but both are equally important to a story’s survival.

And as much as that sucks for the experimental, thematic writers who want their stories to mean something, it’s an important lesson to learn early if you want to have a career in the industry. It’s the entertainment industry. You don’t need to change the way you write, but you might need to accept the fact that your art might have a smaller audience. And that’s okay. Some of the best movies I’ve watched and songs I’ve heard were from independent artists.

For the longest time, I thought to write something good you had write a masterpiece. Some touching, gorgeous beast of a script that has zero plot holes, witty writing, and characters who ride the lines of morality like Australian surfers. Y’know, high art. But not only is that impossible, it isn’t even a good goal. That sucks all the fun out of it.

So put your heart into it. Write the stories you want to write. Make inside jokes, reference your favorite shows, name the street after the street you grew up on. Leave your fingerprints all over your work, even if it gets a little messy. The acclaim your work needs, not always the acclaim it deserves, is going to come.

So have fun.