Age of Cage

I certainly didn't expect this book to blow my socks off but it's still extremely weird. The first 20% is about the Coppolas, which, while relevant (and more interesting that Cage, honestly) is not that important to Cage's journey as an actor. Then the author just spends a lot of time putting their own opinion in as if it's fact- saying Con-Air was subpar, or that Cage brought nothing to certain roles. Just weird. I expected more of a biography and while it's technically that, I feel like I could write this book with a few weeks time and access to Wikipedia.

My only gripe is the author got a couple of easily-checkable facts wrong. He mentions Cage's Con Air character having a son, but it's his daughter he's hoping to meet. And the author calls Gone in Sixty Seconds an “R-rated” feature but that movie is PG-13. So it makes me wonder what else he got wrong. Still a fun read and made me want to have a Nicolas Cage marathon!

DNF. I got to page 97 out of 220 pages of content in this book, and the writer made me work to get there.

This is a shallow recounting of Cage's filmography. If you would like pages spelling out summaries of Cage's films loosely connected by biographies of the various people directing, writing, and casting them, you may enjoy it. Very little of Cage's personal life is covered. Very little of what informs Cage's decisions is covered. The writer often suggests things very boldly with not much in the way of evidence — thankfully these are typically opinions, but it still feels odd.

The writing is shoddy. Maybe I'm on high alert for adverbs having just finished Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and King's On Writing, but wow! The author loves writing sentences like, “Hugh Wilson never really fit into Hollywood...” (that's the hum-dinger that made me put the book down). At 97 pages, you could build a little home for yourself with all the “never reallies” in this book. I never really liked that phrase!

You know what else ‘never really' satisfaction'd me? The pattern of sentences. The writing here feels reportorial, but not in a New York Times or David Simon way. It feels like writing where the author is paid by the word, and the sentences written as such. They are repetitive, and the structure repeats itself over and over again.

I'm annoyed, I'll admit. Cage's career is interesting! It beggars belief that this book is so dry and boring. For all the talk of Cage's karate kicks and high-energy, I'm not sure this book would kick if you hit its knee with one of Gallagher's hammers.