The unlikelihood of a Nicolas Cage beard

If it seems like I'm writing a lot of posts about Nicolas Cage in the past few months, that could be because every film of his I watch (or rewatch) provides new grist for the mill.

Last night it was Pig, and lo and behold, like clockwork, here comes the post.

Cage has a different appearance in Pig, one you can get an idea of from the poster here. He's got shoulder length hair and a grizzled beard that involves several months' worth of growth, not to mention about six decades' worth of grayish white.

When I say "different," I mean we haven't seen it much before -- and there's a reason for that.

When you make seven movies a year, you don't have time to grow your hair or a beard.

Not unless all seven of those roles require that look. 

Logically, this should be a fake beard and fake hair. If it is, it's an incredible makeup job. Cage gets knocked around in a couple scenes in a way that suggests the makeup wouldn't hold up, though that's obviously not a real obstacle for a professional makeup team. The thing that really gives lie to that idea is that Michael Sarnoski's film doesn't seem like the type to do anything artificially. They'd have Cage grow the beard because he should want to, because it's the type of film that deserves it. (Which doesn't mean I didn't find it confounding on some level. But this is not a proper Pig review.)

One thought that occurred to me is that this could have been the first movie Cage made after COVID, which would have allowed him to grow his hair long. In fact, if you are Nic Cage, you should grow your hair long out of sheer speculation, as someone could want that exact look for the film they are making. If the first job you get doesn't require that look, no problem -- you just shave.

But in checking Wikipedia, I can see that principal photography for Pig occurred in September of 2019, when COVID was just a toxic twinkle in our collective eye. 

Now, what would really be useful would be if there were a way to quickly cross-check production schedules for various movies, like an IMDB for pre-production only, with timelines showing the proximities of one production schedule to another for various actors. Wouldn't be a great business model for a website, but it would be useful in this case.

I suppose I could sort of manually do it. In 2021 Cage has also had Willy's Wonderland, and Wikipedia tells me that principal photography was in February 2020. So no conflict there.

Okay, this is interesting. Cage's other 2021 film is Prisoners of the Ghostland, which appears to have been shot immediately after Pig in November of 2019. In this film Cage appears to have a more closely cropped beard, indicating that indeed, he could have grown it out for Pig and cleaned it up for Ghostland.

His movie before Ghostland was The Croods: A New Age, in which I don't remember him having a beard. (I'll let that sink in a moment.)

Okay now it's all coming together. In 2020 he released Jiu Jitsu, in which he has a beard. That was shot in June of 2019. So the beard is definitely real. 

I guess the big surprise about this is not the beard itself, but the fact that Nicolas Cage was willing to make fewer than seven movies a year the past few years. 

Seven is only a slight exaggeration. In 2018 and 2019 he had six films in each year, but he slowed down his pace after that, apparently excising most of the straight-to-video releases he would shit out after a week of work on each. COVID could certainly have played a role in only two 2020 releases and only three in 2021 -- in fact, it almost had to have. But so could greater selectivity.

He may have spent most of what he's earned throughout his career, which is the reason he has to keep working at this furious pace. But the last couple years -- and specifically, the growing of the beard -- suggest that at last, Cage may have reached a point in his emotional growth and his personal finances where he can just say "I've got a beard, take me as I am." And my guess is there are plenty of people willing to do that.

I do expect that the beard period is over. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is listed for 2022 and is currently in post-production, and in that movie, Cage plays himself. 

If you cast Cage to play himself, you most likely want the clean-shaven version so it is more iconic Cage. But who knows, maybe "himself" will have a beard from now on, and if that's the case, maybe it's a good thing for all of us.