Did you know that Nicolas Cage directed one and only film, released in 2002? Focus on the little-known “Sonny”, with James Franco in the lead.
Nicolas Cage is a cult actor, elusive, capable of playing in the most improbable scenes and then coming back to show what a great actor he is when you least expect it, as was the case recently with the excellent Dream Scenario. But Nicolas Cage, he is also a director! Didn’t you know that the American had directed a feature film?
To find traces of the filmmaker “Nic” Cage, we have to go back in time more than two decades. It was in 2000 that the whimsical nephew of Francis Ford Coppola (who would be ready to reunite with a cult character that he “adores”) decided to go behind the camera with a drama called Sonny and James Franco in the lead. .
The history of this Sonny unpublished in French cinemas? It’s that of the famous Sonny (James Franco), who is done with the army. Before starting his life as a man, he goes through New Orleans to visit his mother, Jewel, the owner of a brothel which is gradually declining and in which the young man previously worked. So Jewel encourages her son to work for her again, while he wants to forget his past. But Sonny falls in love with Carol, a new prostitute who has arrived at the brothel…
“It’s like going to school for the first time.”
Sonnyin the credits of which, in addition James Francowe also find Mena Suvari and Henry Dean Stanton, was a strong experience for Nicolas Cagewho also stars in the film. “Making a film is like going to school for the first time”explained Nicolas Cage on the occasion of the presentation of the film in competition at the 2002 Deauville Festival. “It’s the same sensations. I knew I could understand the actors and therefore direct them, but I wasn’t sure I could direct a film. After a week of filming, I found my rhythm, it “became natural.”
Nicolas Cage, recently featured in Dream Scenariowill be on the Croisette next May for the presentation of the thriller The Surfer in Midnight Session. A film in which the actor, confronted with a gang of surfers, must fight to reconquer his territory and the esteem of his son. Elusive Cage…
The trailer for the recent “Butcher’s Crossing”, starring Nicolas Cage: