Nicholas Cage seems pretty freaked out about the future, especially regarding A.I.
Deadline reported that in a recent interview with The New Yorker, the actor who stars in the upcoming movie Longlegs got honest about what he thinks will happen to him after he dies.
A lot of his freakout occurred when he was interrupted by a publicist who let him know he was scheduled to be scanned. This brought the interview into interesting territory.
Nicholas Cage gets honest about A.I. and tech in film
“I have to slip out after this to go get a scan done for the show and then also for the movie I’m doing after the show,” Cage said. “Two scans in one day!”
He was referring to a scan for the upcoming Spider-Man Noir. From there, he went on about the process of how it all happens.
“Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change — I don’t know,” he continued. “They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital A.I….God, I hope not A.I. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it.”
“And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up?” he added. “Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”
In a more toned-down part of the interview, Cage also discussed his thoughts on acting styles.
“Well, you know, acting has gone through phases of what is considered great,” the Family Man star said. “And it’s been around for a long time. Somewhere along the way we got obsessed with the nineteen-seventies naturalism style of film performance, which is good. Look at Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver or Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy — it’s great. But that’s not all acting can be. It can go even further back to the Billy Wilder movies and the kind of repartee that these actors had, like Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney. That’s something I’m curious to bring back. To me, it’s all different styles. And why not try a little bit of everything? Why get stuck?”
When asked about actors doing new things and whether he was enthusiastic about what’s happening these days, Cage said, “I think that there have been remarkable performances. I don’t know if it’s new, per se, or a kind of recycling or return to an older style where people are less afraid to express themselves in a larger format. They’re breaking free from ‘If it’s quiet and minimal, it’s great.’ They can liberate themselves and use their voices and gesture and go bigger. I’ve seen it in different actors — for me, Cate Blanchett certainly reminds me of the Golden Age vanguard style of film performance as well.”
Catch Nicholas Cage in Longlegs when it hits theaters on July 12.
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