By Steven Hartman · August 7, 2023
Nicolas Cage is a phenomenon. He’s worked with some of the biggest directors on $100 million movies and taken risky roles in low-budget indies. In the 1990s, he was one of the biggest stars in the world and won an Academy Award for his role in Leaving Las Vegas in 1996. By the early 2000s though, he seemed to say, “Yes” to just about any screenplay thrown his way. Cut to the last few years where he seems more self-aware and eager to take on a combination of fun roles and artistic endeavors. He’s unique, a cultural icon and the face of countless memes. Turn on a Cage classic, download the script, and see what makes Cage all the rage.
Scripts from this Article
Peggy Sue Got Married
Raising Arizona
Moonstruck
Leaving Las Vegas
Face Off
Adaptation
National Treasure
Mandy
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Stories allow us to bring up existential questions and explore the “What if” scenarios in our lives. In Peggy Sue Got Married, the idea of going into the past puts “What if” into the mind of a wife and mother who faints at her high school reunion only to wake up 25 years earlier with the chance to redo her life.
Stuck in a bad marriage to her high school sweetheart, Charlie (Nicolas Cage), she explores the future if she didn’t get pregnant and marry an unfaithful man. Released just a year after Back to the Future, the film about redoing the past was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and nominated for three Academy Awards.
Read Peggy Sue Got Married and see what decisions Peggy Sue makes that alter the course of her life and why it makes for a compelling film starring Nicolas Cage and Kathleen Turner.
Read More: Francis Ford Coppola Movies: A Classic Love for the Modern Epic
One of two films released in 1987 starring Nicolas Cage, Raising Arizona reached cult classic status thanks to video stores and cable TV while simultaneously making famous the quirky style of the Coen Brothers. Nicolas Cage stars as a H.I. McDunnough, a career criminal who happens to fall in love with a police officer played by Holly Hunter. When they find out she can’t get pregnant, McDunnough decides to kidnap one of the quintuplets of a tycoon with the desire to make them their own.
It’s a zany comedy filled with brilliant moments and the appropriate start to the Coen Brothers career as well as pushing Cage into a leading actor status.
Read More: The Dudes Abide: The Must-Read Scripts of the Coen Brothers
Nicolas Cage’s second film in 1987 garnered Oscar wins for star of the film, Cher, for Best Actress, and John Patrick Shanley for Best Screenplay. The story centers around Loretta (Cher) who begins to fall in love with a guy named Ronny (Cage). This wouldn’t be much of a problem except Ronny is the brother of the man she plans on marrying. But in her defense, she doesn’t really love her fiancé and, for Ronny, he hates his brother.
Moonstruck is part romantic-comedy, part family drama, and harkens back to the time when romcom could be a little more complicated and even get released in theaters. Read the screenplay and see how Shanley wove together several storylines and kept the intriguing plot moving along in a tale about two lost souls.
Read More: Funny Valentines: Rom-Coms to Make You Laugh and Fall in Love
Somewhere between the romantic comedies of the late-1980s and the action films in the middle-to-end of the 1990s, Cage picked up his Academy Award for his role as Ben, a screenwriter who heads to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. In Vegas, he forms an unlikely friendship with Sera, a prostitute, who accepts Ben’s life decisions and vice versa. The dynamic between the two is compelling to watch unfold as both develop a love for one another. But the trajectory of Ben’s final days are set and Sera is stuck watching Ben slowly kill himself with each sip from the bottle.
Read More: Vegas Movies: A 20 Year Fascination with Sin City
Who said a movie has to be believable? Face/Off is about a detective who switches faces (literally) with a terrorist in an attempt to find a bomb he planted. What makes this script a must-read is how a movie that shouldn’t work, ends up in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 1997. The movie works because it’s not about the science but rather the novel idea of a cop who will stop at nothing to save the city. When the plan goes awry, the terrorist, who is able to put on the cop’s face, takes over the cop’s life.
Starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, it’s a compelling watch as the two 90s icons inhibit each other’s mannerisms in an action-filled movie from director John Woo.
Read More: Anatomy of a Script: Face/Off
Only from the mind of Charlie Kaufman do you get a movie like Adaptation, which stars Nicolas Cage as Charlie Kaufman and his made-up twin brother Donald. What originally started off as an adaptation of the book The Orchid Thief becomes both the adaptation of that non-fiction book and Charlie’s struggles in writing the film version.
It’s a strange tale that captures the plot of the original book while also diving into the internal challenges a screenwriter faces in their own life, especially when their less-talented brother seems to pick up screenwriting easily and manages to start making their mark in Hollywood.
Adaptation is a unique film proving that there is room in the entertainment industry for truly original material that can capture the eyes of its most talented filmmakers and actors. It’s a must-read.
Read More: Being Charlie Kaufman: The Self-Consciousness of Absurdist Comedy
National Treasure is a four-quadrant film that shows writers how to weave in history and mystery, action and thrills and a few laughs. Screenwriters can gather a lot of ideas for turning their stories into script by how writers Jim Kouf and Cormac Wibberley & Marianne Wibberley built a team of treasure hunters, created a puzzle for both the characters and audience to solve, how antagonists work in a film like this and maybe even teach us a little bit of history.
Nicolas Cage stars as Benjamin Franklin Gates, a researcher whose family has been obsessed with finding a national treasure – if only they can find the right clues. The screenplay shows writers how to create an action-adventure that takes the audience to multiple destinations.
Read More: The Bruckheimer Blueprint
Nicolas Cage has been through several acting stages in his career working his way up to stardom, then seemingly taking any role they offered in the direct-to-DVD movie market to his latest stage as a risk-taking thespian who uses his name and talents to elevate independent films. Mandy is one such film that puts Cage’s character on a psychedelic trip when a hippie cult sends him on a violent rampage as he fights to get his kidnapped girlfriend back.
Read the mind-bending script co-written and directed by Panos Cosmatos (son of Tombstone director, George P. Cosmatos).
Nicolas Cage stars as Nic Cage and, really, that’s all you need to know. This film is wild in its execution and enters the realm of experimental films that stars an actor playing an alternate reality version of themselves, think Being John Malkovich or This is the End.
The plot consists of Nic Cage, who struggles to make money, accepting a million dollars to show up at a shady billionaire’s birthday party. Only this rich guy made his money dealing arms illegally and has recently kidnapped a high-profile individual. Cage is approached by the CIA and must use his acting chops to help bring the billionaire to justice and find the kidnapping victim before it’s too late.
Read More: Metacinema: Films That Break Through into Cinematic Self-Awareness
Nicolas Cage’s versatile career offers a lot of great studying for a screenwriter in almost any genre. Taking big swings in films like Mandy, Pig and Willy’s Wonderland is proof that actors will gravitate for unique and meaty roles. It shows that there is room in the entertainment industry for original voices and independent ideas. Any of the screenplays listed here are intriguing in their own way, whether they are low-budget indies or major blockbusters.
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