Difference in Opinion

The press junket for National Treasure: Book of Secrets was held recently. Among the people interviews were Nicholas Cage and Jon Turteltaub. There is some nice information in each interview about the movie, and some interesting perspectives on how they went about making it. Click the MORE button to read both interviews.

Nicholas Cage

QUESTION: What were the particular criteria for you to sign onto this project, and what do you think sets this particular sequel apart from the original?

NICOLAS CAGE: Okay. Well, you may be aware that I’ve not done a sequel before, and the reason being that generally speaking, I never like to repeat myself. And in this case, I do believe that if you’re going to do a sequel, it has to promise to be better than the original, or at least as good. Largely, the fear with sequels is that people get lazy, and that they realize they have a winner, and then they just throw money at it and they don’t care. But fortunately, working with Jon Turteltaub, in particular, he really cares about the story. And I wanted to make sure that we could go in a direction that would raise the stakes and also hopefully be more interesting. When they first presented the idea of the civil war, confederate gold, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination, I said, well–right off the bat, for me, that’s more interesting, historically and personally — so that I’m excited by. Then they said, “Well, we have to ratchet it up from stealing the Declaration of Independence. So, we thought you should kidnap the President of the United States.” And then I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. New rules. How? How’s Ben Gates gonna kidnap the President of the United States?” And I got nervous. Then, I started thinking about it, and I started laughing, and I realized that that was the joy of it. That it was funny. That it was absurd. And when they cast Bruce Greenwood, I realized that there would be a level of believability because he looks marvelously Kennedy-esque, and at the same time, he has a terrific gift of comedy that he would be able to embrace that comedia del art, if you will. So, to me, “Book of Secrets” is like a movie unto itself. When you change the treasure, you change the whole story. And you get new clues that are historically accurate, and you get new locations. And you just–the actors stay the same, the characters the same. So, having been a fan of Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes, I thought, “Why not bring Ben Gates back as a sort of modern version, if you will, a historical version, archeological version, of a detective looking for and unlocking the mysteries of these treasures?” And it seemed to me wonderfully positive. If Jon Turteltaub has a genius, it’s that he’s made movies without a gun that are entertaining, and you can take the whole family. And there are worse things to do than to inspire, especially the youngsters, to look in their history books. So I thought, “Let’s go, let’s do it.” So, I did it. And I’m happy I did it.

QUESTION: Did you want to do something new with the character, since it’s the first time you’ve played the same one twice? And what has been your experience having young fans, because I imagine before the first National Treasure, maybe, kids under 13 might not have seen many of your films.

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, children to me are of the utmost importance and they really are the future, aren’t they? And so, I want to treat that carefully. I’m one of those people that believes that the power of film is intense and you have to really think about it responsibly. And in this case, as I said, to get them to enjoy themselves with mom and dad or the whole family, and also look in their history books in a way that isn’t like, “Oh, you must read,” or “You must learn,” but actually enjoy and helps them to enjoy the ride even more because there’s a level of believability to it. You wonder, “Wow! Why are there missing pages in the Booth diary?” Then you go see the movie and you can use a little imagination and it makes the ride more enjoyable. So, I’m always thinking about the kids if I make that sort of movie. And even with Ghost Rider, I was thinking about the kids.

Walt Disney, for me, is a magnificent hero of sorts because he was probably the most influential artist of our times. And he’s such an influence, we don’t even think of him sometimes as a human being, but he did this amazing stuff. He took these great classics — stories like Pinocchio and Snow White, and made them accessible to children. And with Ghost Rider, I was trying to do the one story he never did, probably for obvious reasons, which was Faust. But make it something that kids could go, “Well, yeah, this is really just a myth.” We’re all gonna get in trouble, and how do you get past that? And so, I was thinking about them there too.

QUESTION: As far as being in a sequel, were you were able to do anything with the character this time, which you’ve never been able to do, you know, one time.

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, that was my first question to Jerry Bruckheimer was, “It’s been three years. I’m not the same guy. How am I gonna go back and do Ben Gates?” And he said, “That’s it. The character has changed.” And the response I got at Disney was that I seem lighter, I’m smiling more, I’m maybe happier in the movie. I think a weight has been taken off of the character. He’s been accepted academically. He’s not considered a wacko anymore, from the first movie, and so he feels happier.

QUESTION: Are more open to sequels now?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, if I think there’s room to grow with the character, and as I said before, if you can make it better than the original, absolutely.

QUESTION: That being said, would you mind doing a third National Treasure if all the elements were right?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, on National Treasure, I believe that it should become more and more International Treasure. And I was very happy to see that we went to London, England, and Paris, France. But I’d like to see the movie go wider still. I could go into Africa, Egypt, to Asia, and keep going. And my hope is that Ben is recruited and he gets a dossier from these other countries about their history and he has to download it and learn and then try to go on these hunts on their behalf. That would be a lot of fun for me.

QUESTION: How are you like the character Benjamin Gates?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, one of the things that comes to mind is ancestors. In a lot of so-called primitive cultures, there’s a tremendous respect for ancestors that we don’t see as much, for whatever the reason, in modern American culture. And with Ben, I wanted to make it clear that he really believes–probably ‘cause his grandfather, Christopher Plummer knighted him at such an early age, he took it to heart and he really believes in a chivalrous way that everything he is, is on account of his ancestors and he–they’re not dead to him. So, they’re still there with him and he’s honoring them. And I like that about him. And I think I try to embrace that in my own life, and also history. It’s a quid pro quo where I — because of probably playing Ben Gates — really appreciate history now. And also I enjoy being in places that I feel the weight of past events, and I like old architecture and old buildings. And if you use a little imagination, you can time travel.

QUESTION: You said that you would like to see Ben Gates go overseas. Any ideas where you would like him to go, and do you get involved in the stories? Do you try to read books and get ideas for what the next story might be?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, personally, my interests are ancient history and ancient civilizations. And in my own life, I’d like to go to places like Angkor Wat or Easter Island. And it would be fascinating to see Ben also go to those places as well, and how they could all tie together somehow. The way we left the movie, the president asked me, “What’s on page 47?” And I wanted to figure out, what could I say that would really make people interested on what’s on page 47 without saying it. So I thought of the words “life altering”. So whatever it is, it’s gonna have to be life altering.

QUESTION: In the movie, Ben Gates makes a comment to the President that many today would consider old fashioned in that he implies that it’s the office, and because of the office of the presidency, that he admires the man, and believes him to be an honorable and honest man. Do you believe that is an old fashioned value that has no place in today’s society?

NICOLAS CAGE: I think one of the things that comes out in that moment is that, Ben is really speaking what we all want to believe. And in a way, he’s charging the president in that moment. ”You took this office, so, this is the oath, are you gonna perform or not?” That’s how I saw that.

QUESTION: Has there already been talk about a third film, and if so, for the Hispanic readers, has there been any interest in maybe the Mayan, Aztec or Inca civilizations since you are interested in ancient civilizations?

NICOLAS CAGE: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, in this case with “Book of Secrets”, we got into Olmec and Zapotec and–my personal interest in–if you go to Belize and you see pyramids and apparently, they were doing brain surgery if you look at some of the skulls. And that to me is remarkable and really interesting. How did they know to do then? What were they doing with it and did it work? And it’s quite fascinating. So that would be something. That’s a different movie, I think.

QUESTION: Ben is certainly defined by the people that came before him, his ancestors, do you relate to that as far as your acting career?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, I do relate to that. I think so. I feel that–it began with Carmine Coppola. We didn’t come from money. He came here because he could play the flute and he joined Toscanini, no less, Toscanini’s Orchestra and was the first chair flautist. The most beautiful thing that happened–just a sidetrack to that, but about two years ago, I was sleeping and I was–and the TV was on, it was the Arts Channel. I didn’t know. And I heard this flute and I woke up and it was my grandfather playing the flute and it was the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits”. I’m getting chills thinking about it. It was like he was talking to me. It was amazing. But he was the beginning of our history in the arts. And then he married Pennino, my grandmother’s family, he was writing songs. He was a composer. And then from there, it just kept going, Francis and Sophia, and Taly, and everybody.

QUESTION: When you take the Book of Secrets it’s in a way like questioning authority. Are you one who questions authority? Are you comfortable with making films that have that message?

NICOLAS CAGE: I believe that there’s a way to question authority with manners, with dignity, and there’s no reason to be rude about it. You can still say, “I want some clarity here.” And I don’t want to get political as I said but, yeah. I mean the Book of Secrets, I don’t know. I mean, it’s an urban myth. But I’m sure there’s tons of things that are classified that we’re not supposed to know for whatever the reason, that we’d probably like some answers on. Sure.

QUESTION: Earlier you mentioned how much children meant to you and, being the parent of a young child, how has that reinvigorated your passion to do programming for kids, and has it changed your perspective on your work at all?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, children, especially from 1 to 6 are so impressionable. And the main priority is just make sure they’re happy as much as possible. That’s the job. Make them as happy as you can possibly make them, in my opinion. Because we know as they get older, things start happening and there’s pressures and there’s hormones and all of that. So, in the beginning, you want it to be, just, how happy can you keep them for that wonderful magical period of time, and that means movies that are positive. And he loves the Yellow Submarine and he likes the Beatles and that music and the Wiggles and all of that, and that’s great. There’s plenty of time to discover the other stuff, and I’m sure he will if he is like all the rest of us in my family. But in terms of choices, I try to make movies that will hopefully do some good for the whole family in that way.

QUESTION: Can you talk a little about working with Ed Harris and Helen Mirren?

NICOLAS CAGE: Helen Mirren is someone that I’ve really admired ever since I saw her in Excalibur, and that was the first thing I said to her, “I loved you as Morgan La Fey.” One of my most powerful crushes was Helen Mirren as Morgan La Fey. And she’s really down-to-earth. I have to tip my hat to her that she would win the Oscar in The Queen and then go in, in the grand spirit of Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn go make an adventure film. To me that shows a lot of spirit and a great zest for life and that she’s willing to do that and jump around and wear the wire and all that. I just–I love her for that. And she’s funny. Within two minutes, she puts you at ease. She doesn’t take us all too seriously and she makes you relax and you have a lot of great laughs together, and I would love to work with her on every movie. Ed Harris, I had the pleasure of working with on “The Rock,” but we didn’t have too many scenes together. But he’s one of those actors that’s brutally real on film and you can’t help but be blown away by his talent. Because of that, he just–if you look at his performances, Pollock or any number of his performances, with the one he just did recently with David Cronenberg, I mean, he’s always got this gravitas and this weight to him that is compelling. So, when they said he was in the movie–in the grand spirit of Jerry, he always casts the best actors–I knew we had the possibility of making something very, very exciting.

QUESTION: What about Jon Voight?

NICOLAS CAGE: Jon Voight is–I always said, if you’re gonna cast someone to play my father, cast the greatest actor in the world. And they said, “Well, how about Jon Voight?” I said, “That’ll work for me.” And so, I was very happy about that.

QUESTION: You have a lot of really physical scenes in this movie. What was the most challenging or most fun to shoot?

NICOLAS CAGE: Well, the most challenging sequence hands down was the platform, the balancing platform sequence, because it was a mathematical, physical conundrum to act. And I had to try to keep in my head what happens in terms of leverage and physics, if you step here and he goes up there or she goes down there and it just was a mess. And it actually had to be reshot once or twice to get it to make sense for all of us. So, that would be the sequence that comes to mind as the most challenging.

QUESTION: How long did it take to actually shoot that sequence?

NICOLAS CAGE: That particular sequence, I recall, being at least three weeks. Yeah.

QUESTION: If you could explore any historical mystery from any country, is there one that you would like to see Ben try to solve?

NICOLAS CAGE: To see Ben Gates try to solve? Jerry Bruckheimer already did a movie on Arthur but, I mean, I would like to see him go back into those areas and domains and try to really locate the actual person behind Merlin or the actual historical person behind Arthur and really look at that because I’m one of those people that believes with every myth, there is a kernel of truth. So, I’d be curious to see how that could relate.

QUESTION: What is it about working with Jerry Bruckheimer that makes you work with him so much?

NICOLAS CAGE: I think if you look at his logo, it’s in the logo. He’s always trying to catch lightning in a bottle, or freeze lightning. And he gets actors together whom he trusts and keeps you in a state of, I call it a high-wire state or no-net productions where you never really know what the dialogue’s gonna be until the last minute. And that’s enormously frustrating, and at the same time, it gives you a spontaneity and a buzz where everyone’s charging and electric together, and then he captures it. And I think that the thought process is, if it doesn’t work, he’ll do it again, or he’ll get more writers, and he’ll keep doing it until he gets it to work. But what is captured is a spontaneity and an energy which is a lot of fun to watch. And I think that’s why we keep working together, because I know he’ll give me great actors like Helen Mirren and Ed Harris, and he cares about the product.

Jon Turteltaub

INTERVIEWER: Jon, do you challenge yourself to come up with the most difficult plot twists? You seem to keep topping yourself. Do you try to think of a plot twist to take it to a whole other level?

JON TURTELTAUB: We’re happy just to come up with a plot twist at this point, are you kidding? Somewhere between the complexity of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the simplicity of my brain, is where we end up landing I think. It ain’t easy. The plot twists in all the historical stuff are fascinating. It’s relating it to our current story that’s always the trick. How do you make a plot twist within your own story that isn’t even related to the history? That’s the hard part.

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever hit any dead ends where you can’t figure out how to get out of them?

JON TURTELTAUB: It’s all dead ends. Truly it is. It’s all dead ends, and the most underrated and most complicated part of the entire film business is writing. And great ideas are dead ends almost all the time, and it’s finding those few that take you somewhere else. And not just a dead end, but how does that ending have anything to do with your beginning, and making it seem like you knew what you were doing when you started. All of that is really tough. It’s been tough from the very beginning with the first movie, because it’s like writing murder mysteries. You have to figure out where these clues go, and who done it, and all of that stuff, and base it on fact.

But that’s the trick. We wanted to base it all on truth, and if there was a real character like this, and the catch was that he has the audacity to do the undoable, unthinkable thing — whether it’s stealing the Declaration of Independence or kidnapping the president. Jerry knows so many really cool Washington, Navy SEAL-type people, that we always bring them in and ask them, “Alright. We need to kidnap the president in this movie. How do we do it?” And they say, “Oh, you can’t do it. It’s not like there’s a secret tunnel under Mount Vernon.” You start with that, and then you start looking for history that backs up what you did.

INTERVIEWER: How much control do you have when you’re directing a Jerry Bruckheimer picture?

JON TURTELTAUB: Artistic freedom? Tons. Jerry’s objective is to get people he believes in and let them do their thing. And he stands back and watches and when something seems a little off, he brings up a question, or he’ll say, “Is that really working or do you think–maybe he should say that.” Being Jerry, you assume he’s right. Even if you’re not sure whether he’s right, you’ll assume he’s right because he seems to always be right. Michael Bay has such a distinctive style and look to his stuff that seems to be equated with Jerry. But that’s really Michael’s thing because Michael’s movies, for Jerry, look different than Tony Scott’s movies for Jerry, which look different than my movies with Jerry. Shockingly, Jerry, with all the big action stuff, Jerry hammers away at character, humor, logic. He knows that these big movies can very easily just be silly and just way outta whack. And those are the things he harps on. And then he lets Michael take the really cool pictures that he does, and Tony Scott — it’s just extraordinary-looking. My stuff isn’t based on the look. It’s much more character-based. But I know I’m making a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, so I start pushing to make my stuff look more like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie looks, whatever that means. But somehow it does, and you get there. The DP’s know what Jerry’s movies look like. I used John Schwartzman and Amir M. Mokri and each of them had done at least two movies for Jerry before. So, everybody gets it.

INTERVIEWER: Everyone we talk to says that basically, you are Ben Gates – you are the history buff. So when you do these movies, and there is history in it, but then it just goes completely off the deep end –

JON TURTELTAUB: Well, first of all, I’m a coward, so I’m hardly Ben Gates. He has that audacity to really do the stuff that no one would ever try. I’m probably emotionally more like Riley, and I have a figure like Helen Mirren — that’s not true.

Yeah, I like history. I do my research though, with this stuff. The producers and writers and I, we’re doing all the research, so we know all the stuff that didn’t make it into the script. So we have the answers, when the cast asks us these questions, we can give them those answers. But I think every director tries to bring their own personality to the finished product. That may keep me from making certain movies, or making certain great movies, because so much of humanity and great art has to have that darkness in it. And I’m kind of a dork in that way, but that’s sort of why this movie has the tone it has.

INTERVIEWER: Diane Kruger told us of your fascination with romantic comedies of the 1940’s. What can you bring of that kind of movie to an action film like this?

JON TURTELTAUB: You know, partially, is that I look at this film as an adventure movie more than an action movie. And to me, it always starts character first. And the romantic comedies of that era sort of became the Hitchcock films of the 50’s and 60’s. The Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn relationship as an archetype from movies such as “Charade” or Cary Grant in “To Catch a Thief” becomes sort of that elegant, charming way of mixing action, romance and humor. And that’s what I wanted to do with National Treasure is bring sort of that old-world, classy charm and fill it with a bunch of Jerry Bruckheimer action. We believe that the audience wanted to see good people being smart, using their brains to work their way through a problem, and having movie-star courage. And I think it worked.

INTERVIEWER: What’s the origin of the Book of Secrets?

JON TURTELTAUB: We didn’t come up with it ourselves. We all thought of it because that’s stuff we’ve heard our whole lives. When I ask people about it, they all assume there’s something–either like this book, or it’s handed down verbally; if not from our President, but from that really secret powerful guy who knows everything but you don’t know who he is. Somebody has to share some information somewhere along the line with these presidents. The question is, in what form is the President told what things? And we just kinda collected a bunch of urban myths and put our own spin on it, and what made the most sense is they keep their own little secret notes and tell each other what the other one needs to know.

INTERVIEWER: For your films, what are the stories that interest you the most?

JON TURTELTAUB: I like stories where I can see relevance in my own life to some extent, or I feel like I’m learning from the morality play I’m watching, where I see characters make better decisions than I would. And more than anything, I like stories and characters that surprise me. When that little thing comes along with a character that I just couldn’t have imagined myself, something I couldn’t think of, that’s what I respond to, which is a lot.

INTERVIEWER: You left this film open for a part three – are you already thinking of ideas for the next one?

JON TURTELTAUB: A little bit. I mean, we didn’t set out to make it sequel-suggestive. I kind of resent that in movies. You gotta pay your dues. And this movie has to earn a sequel if there’s gonna be one. And that’s not just the success of the movie; it has to really be liked. It has to have not just a good opening weekend, it has to last. And the DVD has to do well, and you have to hear people talking about how much they liked it. And you can tell, you can tell from your friends what movies people like and didn’t like. And if we get over that hurdle, then we gotta come up with something worthy of making a movie about.