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Nicolas Cage Crashes Nicolas Cage Festival, Reads Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Deserves Oscar

Independent- What we can all agree on… is Cage’s brilliance when interacting with fans. Most recently, the Oscar winner appeared at Nic Cage celebration, titled CAGED. Put on by the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, the organisers have invited Cage along every year since its inception four years ago, the festival taking place every January – Cage’s birth month. 

In a surprising twist, the Face/Off actor crashed the event, sitting through a selection of his own films… To top it all off, Cage gave a 10-minute reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart, becoming increasingly dramatic throughout.

Nicolas Cage is, himself, a national treasure. He crashed his own festival after snubbing them for four years, watched a marathon of his own movies, and finished with an interpretive reading of an Edgar Allen Poe short story that I was assigned in 8th grade English (The Most Dangerous Game, To Build A Fire, and The Cask of Amontillado. In that order). Watch the last minute of that video. You’re damn right the man deserves a standing ovation. Look at that coat! I’m sure some endangered animal is missing its skin, and I’m also sure that Nic Cage filleted that animal with his bare hands. But what a performance. Turning a piece of childhood literature into a halftime speech. You can feel his frustration when he has to switch to the next page. So immersed in the words, so dedicated to his choices. As far as I can tell, his last 30 movies have skipped theaters so that people can mainline them on-demand, but he’s still an all-time great.

Top ten Nic Cage movies:

  1. The Rock
  2. Gone in Sixty Seconds
  3. Lord of War
  4. Family Man
  5. Kick-Ass
  6. Leaving Las Vegas
  7. Face/Off
  8. Honeymoon in Vegas
  9. Con Air
  10. Adaptation