Fear-seeking NICOLAS CAGE wrestles fang-baring venomous snake as he surfs adrenaline waves of near- death.
Nic’s new movie “Joe” called for the fan fave to unleash some of his trademark lunatic antics,i.e. wrestling a poisonous “cottonmouth snake with very large fangs” for one scene.
"I wanted to get a bigger fear so that I could get on top of the smaller fear of playing the part,” he explained.
“The challenge was not having it bite me, but (it) also spit venom. So I had to hold it in a very careful way, and then when I tossed it . . . I was also worried that it would turn around and bite me on my neck.”
Cage called his modern-day method acting “incredible,” and told media, “I felt that I was surfing the adrenaline of picking the snake up, and when I was done with it, I was exhausted.”
“Joe” features Cage as father figure, and flix crix are saying it harkens back to the Cage of yore in his “Leaving Las Vegas” blue period.
But there’s method to Cage’s madness.
“Sometimes I have more abstract and operatic and pop- art kind of visions of what I want to do with a character, more baroque, more Western Kabuki, if you will."
Tell THAT to the snake.
