“Pulling the trigger was not in the script,” George Stephanopoulos said.
“Well, the trigger was There was none “I pulled the trigger,” Alec Baldwin responded. “I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”
“So you never pulled the trigger?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“No, no, no,” Baldwin insisted. “I would never point a gun at anybody or pull the trigger. Never.”
The character of Colton Briggs weeps through Nicolas Cage’s body, his breaking heart palpable as he and his daughter come to terms with the reality of death.
It was such a bold fabrication that even Stephanopoulos saw through it. His exclusive interview with Baldwin, conducted a month and a half after filming the western “Lust,” became big news at the time.
Preventable Deaths
Baldwin has remained largely silent, or at least not given interviews. Pictures of him crying On set after the tragic accident.
We’ll have the full story in a future article, but for now, what’s important to know is that a 24-year-old woman named Hannah Gutierrez was the gunner on “Lust,” which means she was in charge of all the firearms on set, including the replica Colt .45 that Baldwin accidentally fired, killing cinematographer Halina Hutchins.
Hanna Gutierrez was quickly tapped for the role thanks to her well-connected father-in-law, and Lust was her second film as an arms maker, her first being The Old Way with Nicolas Cage.
She raised red flags during filming: Twice, she fired her gun near cast members without warning. The second time, Cage yelled, “Make an announcement! You ruptured my eardrum!” and angrily stormed off the set.
Immediately after filming wrapped, Gutierrez said,“Voices of the West” podcastboasted that “The Old Way” was “a really amazing way” to launch a career in Hollywood, and described the process of loading ammunition as “the most terrifying thing.”
The deadly shooting on the set of “Lust” was just a little over a month away.
She added, “I was really nervous at first and almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but once I did it, it went really smoothly. The most fun part about my job is showing people who are normally scared of guns how safe they are and that it’s not that much of a problem as long as they don’t end up in the wrong hands.”
Do you believe anything happens against God’s will?
Cage begins his first Western, “The Old Way,” with an enormous mustache.
What’s odd is that the movie is pretty much what you’d expect from a low-budget Western starring Nicolas Cage in 2023. What’s even odder is that the movie will be available to watch on Disney+.
At the beginning, a man struggles to escape from a gallows while a preacher preaches, “Do you believe that anything can happen against God’s will?”
Ominous figures emerge from the shadows.
Cage plays Colton Briggs, a gunslinger who must avenge his wife, and to do so he must team up with his 12-year-old daughter, whose journey takes them to — oh my goodness, none of it is interesting or new.
This movie is crap. It’s good to have in the background, it’s relaxing, but it’s basically a mishmash of western archetypes and tropes.
The film’s central theme is the relationship between fathers and daughters, but Cage has played better fathers than that — see his performances in the stunningly good animated film The Croods and its sequel.
Critical reaction to “The Old Way” seems indifferent and cold until you see the film.
The New York Times review was perhaps the most scathing.
“The Old Way” is a cheesy, run-of-the-mill Western, but that’s its charm. … Nicolas Cage sleepwalks as Colton Briggs, a ruthless Montana cowboy who wakes up from retirement as a gunslinger to embark on a drab quest for revenge. … From the simple plot (the heroes chase and find the bad guys) to Cage’s performance, the whole thing is a decidedly low-effort effort, with none of the self-aware wit he displayed in last year’s “The Weight of Great Talent.” Sure, there’s a certain tepidness common to most B-grade Westerns, but the Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s were made with a basic competence that “The Old Way” sorely lacks.
Where to find it
Amazon Prime – $3.99
Google Play – $3.99
Apple TV – $5.99
But still…
First off, guys, this is Nicolas Cage.
Secondly, the reviewer is absolutely right.
And third, they are lazy. Overall It’s terrible. The cinematography is great, but the sets are huge and elaborate.
But “The Old Way” wouldn’t have been in the series without Cage’s central focus. The film is mediocre, full of stereotypes and tropes that were probably never original to begin with, not to mention the special effects and storytelling, and it lacks the creative spark and psychedelic glamour that permeates “Slow West” (2015).
The music sounds like an AI’s attempt at a generic Western soundtrack. The story is similarly clunky and bland. The dialogue is fatuous and awkward. Cage delivers his lines in a haphazard manner for most of the film, and some of the other actors are overly dramatic – it’s not their fault. The characters are uninspired and the themes are vague.
But with Nicolas Cage at the helm, these missteps are trivial, or at the very least, entertaining.
Nouveau Shamanism
People are drawn to Nicolas Cage because he’s the costumed, decorated Nicolas Cage. No one can talk, grimace, or laugh like the king of the reaction shot. His career is as varied and hangover-inducing as a mid-priced buffet.
He’s given some objectively great performances in films like Adaptation (2002), Blast Off Las Vegas (1995) and Raising Arizona (1987).
But his cinematic prowess goes far beyond great acting in the traditional sense: His prolific career, which has seen him appear in over 100 films, is a waterfall of talent and spam.
He played Benjamin Franklin Gates in the series “National Treasure.” teeth Ghost Rider. Can you imagine another actor capable of such dramatic transformations?
He doesn’t always pull off these transformations — sometimes, like in “The Old Way,” it seems like he’s cutting corners — but it’s still a spectacle worth watching, and even if the movie sucks, you get to see Nicolas Cage mastering his craft.
The New York Times Explained He has been described as “Hollywood’s greatest surrealist, whose personal and creative unpredictability has earned him a near-mythical status in certain corners of the Internet.”
He’s so iconic that he has his own acting style, a new shamanism, a process of surrender that Cage sees as an authentic alternative to traditional methods of acting, which he sees as deception: “I don’t act. I feel, I imagine, and I lead.”
The goal of nouveau shamanism is to follow one’s impulses, and this wildness of spirit and eagerness to delve into the depths of the subconscious resonated with legendary film director David Lynch, who described Cage as “the jazz musician of the American theatre.”
Ethan Hawke praised Cage’s ingenuity, calling him “the only actor since Marlon Brando who has actually done something new in the art of acting.”
Nouveau shamanism often leads to “overacting,” which some audiences and critics interpret as flamboyant overacting. This assumption is wrong. It denies the possibility of a kind of cinematic enlightenment.
You can see this in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant (2009), where Cage unleashes his own inner turmoil into the deranged police chief who descends into drug abuse and all manner of corruption.
In Matchstick Men (2003), Cage unleashes the violent urges of an obsessive-compulsive con man, giving free rein to pathology.
The performance is over
Nicolas Cage is a true Hollywood actor. He credits James Dean with inspiring him to start his acting career, but his real name is Coppola, of course, from “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “American Graffiti.”
Cage has starred in films at every level, from big-budget to no-budget movies.
Cage’s classic paradigm is one of oscillating between the high and the low, and sometimes both at the same time: After winning an Oscar for playing a suicidal, alcoholic writer in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), he went on to make a string of hollow but lovable blockbusters.
They are all Approximation A cinematic masterpiece. A pure blockbuster. Full of over-the-top performances delivered with honesty. We loved every moment of it. This body of work is now etched in the fabric of the American experience.
He played a big character, with big make-up and bad costumes. And Ownership On the big screen in the late 1990s, he appeared in films such as “The Rock” (1996), “Face/Off” (1997), “Con Air” (1997), “City of Angels” (1998), “Snake Eyes” (1998) and “8MM” (1999), and who can forget his desperate yet cool portrayal in “Gone in 60 Seconds” (2000)?
None of these films received any critical acclaim.
Only recently has his performance been praised again. sharp, Films such as Mandy (2018), Pig (2021), and Fate/Zero (2023) are all low-budget films produced by influential independent production companies, including popular film company A24, which distributed Fate/Zero.
“Western movies todayIn the “How the West Was Cast” episode of the podcast, co-host Andrew Patrick Nelson points out that modern Westerns are largely made as passion projects, often with the goal of winning awards.
Compare this to the heyday of the Western, when over 100 Westerns were released each year. During that same time, no Westerns won Best Picture. Westerns only started winning Academy Awards after the genre was thought to be defunct.
The “old way” doesn’t fit perfectly into either paradigm, and for good reason.
I know I’ve been disparaging the film for most of this article, but “The Old Way” does have at least one outstanding moment of cinematic brilliance.
There’s a lovely campfire scene in the film’s first hour, a setting that recalls the powerful scene in True Grit (1969) where Rooster finally tells his life story to Mattie.
As Briggs faces his daughter in the night, confessing his grief over the loss of his true love, he sheds tears for the first time. And the tears are real. The character of Colton Briggs cries through Nicolas Cage’s body. His breaking heart is palpable as he and his daughter come to terms with the reality of death.
This is a prime example of Cage’s acting style, and it’s enough to give us hope that we’ll see more Nicolas Cage westerns in the future.
Late last year, Cage said Vanity Fair reported that he was done with acting, “though he may do three or four more movies.”
He said he plans to star in six films in 2023 alone, including some of his best work to date.
He has since appeared in three films, including Long Legs (2024), and has three more in various stages of production, including his second Western, The Gunslingers.
Still, it’s hard to forget what he told Vanity Fair: “I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say about the movie. I think I’ve done everything I could with the performance of the movie. … I would like to make the selection process more rigorous and rigorous. … I want to say ‘Goodbye’ on a good note.”
But who knows?
Who knows where Nicolas Cage’s acting begins and ends, how far the spectacle and insanity of his screen presence will extend? Who knows if there are limits to what he can feel, lead and imagine?
