Birdy

aka Cage at War Part Two: Vietnam Punched Me in The Face

In many ways Birdy is a perfect companion to Racing with the Moon: two childhood friends return from war, injured and disillusioned. One (Birdy, played by Matthew Modine) is locked in a psychiatric ward, refusing to speak since returning from the jungle. The other (Cage's character, Al) brought in to try to rouse Birdy from his stupor, has bandages covering half his face and suffers nightmares about the shell explosion that put them there. Grim scenes from the hospital contrast with flashbacks of their happy exploits as "crazy Philly kids" in which they tooled around their neighborhood, playing baseball and scoring with chicks at the boardwalk. Their innocence and eagerness to go off to war-- as seen in Racing with the Moon-- are rued as foolish here: "We didn't know what we were getting into with this John Wayne shit...boy, were we dumb."

Yet Birdy's fairly standard wounded-vets-recall-their-innocent-childhood plot is nearly completely overshadowed by a far less common story: man-determined-to-fly-gradually-comes-to-believe-he-is-a-bird-and-falls-in-love-with-his-pet-canary. 

Birdy's obsession begins innocuously enough, with a plan to raise and sell carrier pigeons. To help him collect the pigeons he recruits Al, whose initial enthusiasm fades when he is forced to don a feathered suit ("I look stupid!" "Not to a bird, Al") and climb atop a precarious roof. Soon enough Birdy slips, and ends up hanging on the edge with one hand, looking at the vertiginous drop below, and quietly laughing. Sensing as well as anyone that this is a harbinger of madness, Al redoubles his efforts to reach Birdy, but he is too far away. Not worried, Birdy declares his intention to drop onto the pile of hay below, causing Al to exclaim incredulously "You're going to jump?" only to be told, for the first of many times, "No, Al. I'm going to fly."

His attempts to fly become more serious as he builds a set of man-sized wings, although hardly more scientific: his engineering skills are put in serious doubt when he declares that flying is "mostly a matter of confidence" and that all you need is to "believe the air has substance and will hold you up," a philosophy of flight reminiscent of Douglas Adams, who famously declared flying to be a matter of throwing yourself at the ground and missing. When the wings fail ("I don't know what happened" he says, mystified, "I was going real good then I just fell out of the sky") he takes a different approach: he will fly by becoming a bird.

He keeps several canaries in an aviary in his room and he spends hours communing with them, to the increasing alienation of Al. When he buys a new one, he and Al have the following conversation, which pretty well sums up the entire movie:

Al: What are you going to name him?

Birdy: I don't know. I don't speak canary yet.

Al: Yet?

Birdy (to canary): eep! eep! eep!

Al: Fuck. This is getting weird.

Poor Al doesn't know the half of it-- Birdy has taken to sleeping naked in his aviary and having erotic dreams about his female canary Perta. In a voiceover to the audience, Birdy describes a dream in which "Perta waits...cups herself to receive me...I hover, then lower myself into her. Perta and I become one. I see through her eyes, fly on her wings. I am no longer alone."  Having earlier in the film dismissed female breasts as "overgrown mammary glands" (prompting Al to deliver a heartfelt speech extolling the wonders of tits) he spurns his prom date's advances in favor of a night spent stroking and kissing Perta, as the camera traces a birds-eye-view flight path through the town.  When Birdy decides to tell Al about this breakthrough, saying jubilantly "Last night I flew!" Al is naturally skeptical, and when Birdy insists "When I fly I AM a bird," Al reacts with hostility and storms away. Next we see him, he is wearing an army uniform and walking down the street as Birdy watches from the window.

Back in the present day of the movie, Al is alternately apologetic to Birdy ("I shouldn't have left you") and angry, trying to provoke a reaction through insults: "You don't hop like a bird, you don't really sit like one, and you sure as hell can't fly like one." But for scene after scene Birdy remains unmoving, perched naked on his bedpost staring at the window or curled up under the sink. Cage does an impressive job of carrying these scenes, showing Al's tender care for his friend, his desperation to help him, and his anger and depression over his own injuries. 

When Al is not talking to Birdy, he is developing an increasingly belligerent relationship to the hospital staff, especially Birdy's doctor, who begins dropping veiled threats that he will lock Al up as well. After a particularly intense war flashback, it looks like he may get his wish: Al cries to Birdy "You're right, we should just hide out and not talk to anyone and every now and then go crazy and spit and throw shit at them." But this, at last, gets a response-- Birdy looks up and says lucidly "Al, sometimes you're so full of shit." Al is thrilled and asks, "How come you decided to talk?" to which Birdy shrugs, "I don't know, it just happened." But when the doctor comes in it won't "just happen" again, and faced with an unbelieving medical establishment Al has no choice but to push the doctor against the wall and punch out the two orderlies who follow. He drags Birdy up the stairs as more staff pursue them, and they end up on the roof where Al can barricade the door. But the roof is a dangerous place to bring Birdy, and as soon as Al looks up, Birdy is poised on the precipice, arms flapping and outstretched. Al runs towards him but it's too late-- Birdy jumps! Al rushes to the roof's edge and looks down to see...Birdy, standing on an adjoining roof perhaps ten feet lower. Birdy looks up at Al, smiles, and says innocently, "What?" as the wacky beats of La Bamba kick up and the credits roll.

As one might expect, this ending is somewhat controversial; there is healthy IMDb debate over whether Birdy jumping to his extremely foreshadowed death would have been fitting or boringly predictable. But it's not simply that Birdy doesn't die that makes it odd: everything from after he first speaks seems lifted from a parallel universe where Birdy is less a meditation on the nature of madness and identity and more a wacky sitcom called My Feathered Friend, where Al and Birdy having to escape a mental institution is just another weekly adventure, where Birdy's insouciant "What?" is the catchphrase equivalent of Urkel saying "Did I do that?" after knocking an elaborate five-tiered cake onto Laura's prom dress. I would argue that Al was a bit premature, and it's not until Birdy starts talking when things really get fucking weird.

Weird as it may be, though, the Cage fan can find comfort in certain traditions upheld: the lower-class family background (Al refers to his father derisively as "that fucking garbageman"), the face-centric violence (we learn that shortly after Al arrived in Saigon he was disciplined for striking his superior officer, breaking his nose and knocking out 4 of his teeth) and the gratuitous toplessness. As one IMDb comment put it, under the subject "Cage Lifting Weights":  

I was thinking he looked pretty scrawny in this movie until the scene where he had his shirt off and he was lifting weights, then I was like wow! Those abs were FINE! But he sure had bad teeth back then.

And if you think Cage's shiny chest and bulging arm muscles are on fine display here, you will love the next film, in which he is a professional sculler whose endless supply of slow-motion training montages give the camera plenty to ogle. Stay tuned and stay caged!

 

EXTRAS

Learn what Siskel and Ebert think!

Read all about it! Birdy is based on a novel that sounds even weirder than the movie.

Like movies where dudes totally do it with animals? Check out Passion in the Desert, aka Birdy with leopards: watch clips here!

Racing With The Moon

Originally I had intended to watch this movie-- which follows the exploits of two rambunctious young men about to ship off World War II-- as part of a double feature with Cage's subsequent film Birdy, about two young men who return from Vietnam severally mentally and physically scarred. Unfortunately Birdy proved extremely difficult to acquire, so consider this Part One: Let's Drink Some Coke Before The Horrors of War Destroy Our Innocence and That of Our Nation's.

To be fair, Racing With the Moon certainly aspires to be more than a sepia-toned romp through Nostalgia Towne, and to some extent it succeeds. Yet its desire for both realistic, hard-hitting emotions and hilarious hi-jinks make for a somewhat uneven tone: when the scene in which two poor 17-year olds are being threatened by the pool sharks they tried to hustle to get the money to pay for a desperately needed abortion is played for laughs and scored with a jaunty swing beat the audience cannot but be somewhat confused.

Less confusing is Cage, who spends much of this film engaged in his traditional pursuits of wearing a wifebeater, swigging from a flask, and occasionally screaming curse-filled monologues at innocent bystanders.  He is one of the aforementioned 17-year olds, Nicky, the stalwart best friend of the protagonist, Henry "Hopper" Nash (Sean Penn). Hopper and Nicky are shipping out for war in a month, and the movie follows them as they wile away their pre-combat time walking through their Norman Rockwell painting of a town, leaping over white picket fences with their faithful dog, eating pie at the diner, and plotting how to get laid.

Although this lands Nicky with some unintended consequences, Hopper ends up happily in love with a spritely brunette he spies at the library. After stealthily jumping on the back bumper of the bus she is riding, Hopper sees she lives in a huge Victorian mansion, and thus is what he and Nicky dub a "Gatsby girl".  For a moment, this seems to presage Valley Girl-style class conflict, as Hopper and Nicky come from less distinguished backgrounds-- the son of a gravedigger and abusive alcoholic ne'er-do-well, respectively-- and both have unglamorous jobs setting pins at the bowling alley (in fact, earlier in the film some "rich bastards" [distinguished from regular bastards by their plutocratic argyle sweaters] were shouting insults at them as they worked until Hopper ran up the lane and-- prepare to be shocked--punched the leader in the face).

But everything goes smoothly between Hopper and Caddie, and soon they are playing "Heart and Soul" duets together and making sweet love by the pond. Unfortunately, Nicky's girl's "trouble" begins to loom larger, and after failing to win the money at pool, Nicky feels he has no choice but to ask Caddie for a loan, which he does with characteristic tact by suddenly shouting "DAMMIT CADDIE, I NEED 150 DOLLARS!" with no explanation, then storming away. After Hopper explains the situation, Caddie pledges to help, but there is a nervous look in her eyes that belies her dark secret: she is not the rich girl she is assumed to be, but merely the daughter of a wealthy family's live-in maid.

Luckily her employer's daughter is an extremely understanding girl Caddie's age, who gets her the money easily, but the incident sparks first a fight between Caddie and Hopper (of the "You only liked me because you thought I was rich!" variety) then Hopper and Nicky (of the "You're always making a mess of your life and I have to get you out of it!" variety). After some encouraging words from his dad, Hopper is ready to make amends, which he does first with Nicky-- in a Hemingway-esque conversation full of emotions conveyed through terseness and repetition: "We gotta stick together, Nicky. We gotta stick together." "Yeah... yeah"-- and then with Caddie by buying her shoes (Oh, women! What won't you forgive for a new pair of heels?)

Soon enough time has come for the boys to ship off, and after saying their goodbyes they have one more instance of youthful shenanagins as the train begins to pull away from the station and they have to run alongside it and leap onto the side ladders, as the jaunty music strikes up again to send them off to their next adventure...WAR!

This movie was a good sight Cagier than the last, both in terms of screen time and extent of distinctive Cage flavor. Sean Penn proved an excellent foil, sharing enough of Cage's slightly unbalanced intensity to make them believable friends (let's not forget it was his character who punched the rich kid in the face) yet maintaining a practicality that grounds Cage's wilder moments, such as when Nicky decides to have an eagle tattooed on his chest (The beginning of the scene is viewable here, from 2:10-3:14, although the best part is later when Nicky is drunk and Hopper has to pull him away from picking a fight with a tattoo artist.) It will be interesting to see what happens in the next movie, where the dynamic is reversed and Cage plays the sane one, who has to take care of his bird-obsessed friend. Watch for Part Two of our series, Cage at War... coming soon.

Rumble Fish

At the end of the credits for Rumble Fish, a dedication appears to director Francis Ford Coppola's older brother August, citing him as "my first and best teacher." And that's not the only fraternal favor Francis did for August in this movie-- he also cast his aspiring actor son, Nicolas Cage. Whether this family connection set Cage on the path to stardom is not certain, however: after all, Rumble Fish came out 6 months after Valley Girl, which was surely more vital to propelling his career. Here, Cage is a secondary character, a teenage delinquent named Smokey who frequents the same pool halls and atmospherically lit warehouses as the protagonist Rusty James (Matt Dillon).

Smokey and Rusty live in a rundown town which in their childhood was ruled by gangs, who were in turn ruled by Rusty's older brother, a youth known only as The Motorcycle Boy. He skipped town a few years ago, leaving only graffiti and a lonely younger brother in his wake. Rusty is nostalgic for these days of "the rumbles" and tries to recreate them unsuccessfully, with himself in his brother's place. His girlfriend Patty tries to discourage him: "You're always trying to be like your brother" but he argues "Hey, my brother's the coolest." When The Motorcycle Boy comes roaring back, we learn this mythos is embraced by almost all the town's denizens, who describe The Motorcycle Boy as "like royalty in exile." The only one who seems to disagree is the lone policeman, who is determined to lock up the "crazy" Motorcycle Boy and tells Rusty "You kids think he's some kind of hero. He's no hero."

As a whole the movie is somewhat haphazard-- there are fights, there are parties, there are endless games of pool, but like the aimless kids it follows, it has no real direction. The scenes unfold against stunning black-and-white cinematography: what the town lacks in supervised after-school activities it more than makes up for in bright lights, harsh shadows, and perpetual fog.  (Also in prominently placed clocks, as the film's obsession with time, apparent from the first time-lapse shot of clouds racing through the sky, steadily grows until the landscape begins to resemble the Flavor of Love house, with man-sized clocks strapped to every conceivable surface.)  The reason for some of the film's anachronistic style is hinted at when The Motorcycle Boy reveals he is colorblind and that to him the world resembles "a black and white TV."  

Eventually, some splashes of color do appear on the titular rumble fish, whose bright blue and red bodies swimming against the grey tones of the pet store begin to attract The Motorcycle Boy's attention late in the film. In the dramatic finale he determines to free them from the cell-like tanks they are kept in to stop them killing one another, declaring in a voice dripping with symbolism, "I don't think they'd fight if they were in the river." Unfortunately fish-theft carries a heavy sentence in this town, and when he does steal the aquarium from the pet store the police shoot and kill him, leaving Rusty James to finally take up his brother's mantle and deliver the fish to the river before taking his brother's motorcycle and zooming off towards the ocean.

Although Cage is not a headliner here, he has one notable scene, wherein Smokey steals Rusty James' girlfriend Patty. After seeing them canoodling at the diner, Rusty accuses Smokey of masterminding an elaborate plot to break him and Patty up, a devious plan to which Smokey nonchalantly admits. The insecure Rusty is dumbfounded and enviously responds "I could never think of something like that." Smokey replies coolly "I know" and declares that if they did live in the glory days of gangs, Rusty would never be in charge: "You've gotta be smart to run things. It's nothing personal Rusty James, but nobody would follow you into a gang fight. Cuz you'd get people killed. And nobody wants to be killed." Cage's deadpan delivery of that line makes his presence worthwhile, but he is hardly an essential part of the film. And any movie which has Nicolas Cage standing on the sidelines watching as people punch other people in the face is guilty of an almost criminal negligence of his talent. Still, it is easy to see how this role plus his bad-boy turn in Valley Girl established his rebel reputation, and certainly there is plenty of face-punching to come.  

Valley Girl

In 1982, Frank Zappa's song "Valley Girl" brought his daughter Moon Unit's lilting "grody"s "for sure"s and "gag me with a spoon"s to the ears of a nation. For most it was only a parody of California teen-speak.  But for the producers of Valley Girl, it was inspiration. Approaching Zappa with the idea to make a movie based on his song, they were roundly rejected. But not to be denied, they went ahead and made the movie anyway, seeking further inspiration from the next best source they could think of: William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet were transformed into Randy and Julie, high schoolers from opposite worlds, or at least different youth subcultures, whose love is tested by a rigid society. Nicolas Cage stars as Randy, the first in a long line of raw, sleazy characters with a sensitive soul. In the New York Times review from its release, an otherwise disappointed Janet Maslin praised Cage for being the only one of Julie's suitors "with any vitality" and indeed he stands out in an otherwise run of the mill teen-movie-based-on-a-novelty-pop-song.
    The film opens with panoramic shots of The Valley then drops us into a shopping montage overflowing with the sort of saddle shoes, windbreakers, and off-the-shoulder sweaters with piano-key sleeves now being fought over by hipsters at Beacon's Closet. Taking a shopping break to snack at the food court, one of the shoppers, the subtly named Julie Richman, complains to her friends about her hunky but dumb boyfriend Tommy: "he's got the bod, but his brains are bad news".  When Tommy happens to saunter over, in an eye-catching pumpkin orange popped collar polo shirt, she breaks up with him brusquely, removing his I.D. bracelet from her wrist with a curt "Like, I'm totally not in love with you anymore".

    Cage makes a striking first appearance at the beach, emerging from the water and eliciting lustful coos of "What a hunk!" from the Julie and friends. They change their tune, however, when he and best friend Fred show up at their party in matching ripped-up black and red outfits, weaving their way through a sea of pastel to wide-eyed stares and disapproving whispers [FOOTNOTE 1]. Although perpetually horny sidekick Fred is the one looking to score, it is Randy who catches Julie's eye from across the room and they strike up a sweetly awkward conversation. Unfortunately, this catches the ire of Tommy, who punches Randy in the face (a staple of Cageian cinema) and literally throws him out the door with the help of his thuggish friends. 

    Love cannot be denied, however, and fuming on the injustice of it all ("Nobody is gonna tell me who I can score with!") Randy determines to go back to the party and see Julie once more. He sneaks into the house via bathroom window and proceeds to hide in the bathtub, emerging when Julie enters and whispering "Don't be afraid". Remarkably not freaked out, she agrees to leave the party with him, although has the sense to bring her best friend Stacey along. Fred and Randy take the girls into Hollywood (or as the girls denigratingly dub it, "Hollyweird") which is evidently supposed to be dangerous although that danger is represented by one police car and a lingering shot of Mann's Chinese Theater (playing An Officer and A Gentleman. Seedy!). As they drive along Randy shouts convivial greetings to people walking by on the street-- some of whom are black! others of whom are named Rico!-- in case you are in any doubt over how real he keeps it. This point is hammered home in one of the movie's more irritating scenes, as Fred and Randy admonish the girls with heavy-handed dialog like "This is the real world. It's not fresh and clean like a television show" and "We're ourselves... you're all fucking programmed" as though wearing sunglasses in a nightclub were a profound statement of authenticity.

    But Julie is hooked, and after a charming falling-in-love montage she gushes to her friends that Randy is "the most awesome dude ever! ... man, he's just like tripendicular you know?" However as Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary learned before her, society will not stand any naive attempt to break rank.  The girls pull an intervention to warn Julie of the dire consequences of her love-- she'll never be invited to any more parties, she won't be elected class representative-- and  when she laments having to choose between her love and her friends, she is met with the Mean Girl-style retort "Well, life's not fair." Her hippie dad counters that it's not what you wear, but what are are on the inside that counts, but though she lies awake in her bed agonizing over the decision by the time Tommy saunters up to her at a diner, her will has been broken and she allows him to slip his bracelet over her wrist and eat french fries off her plate as she stares in mute horror. [FOOTNOTE 2]

     Randy does not take this news well, and this I would argue is where the Cage we know and love really comes to the fore. After a bout of angry shouting ("Fuck off for sure like totally!") he descends into a alcoholic depression,  mournfully standing on on a hillside overlooking the Valley, lamenting "She's out there somewhere," and playing a single despondent note on a plastic pan pipe. Fortunately the ever-faithful Fred is around to buck Randy up and offer him some sage advice: "Go wild and crazy. The romantic stuff. Girls love that." Emboldened, Randy embarks on a series of escalating gestures: dedicating a song to her on the radio, planting pictures of himself in her history book, somehow impersonating an usher at a movie theater and a chef at a restaurant she frequents, and spending a night in a sleeping bag on her front lawn. 

     Inevitably these gestures fail, since the ultimate showdown must of course take place at prom. Randy and Fred sneak in (Fred resplendent in a tailcoat, blue vest, and matching blue pompadour) ready to enact their "master plan" which turns out to be punching Tommy in the face right before he and Julie are to be announced as prom king and queen. After meticulously removing several layers of his pastel pink tux and cummerbund, Tommy tries to fight back but his odd, kickboxing- inspired moves are no match for Fred and Randy, who as we all know are from the streets. As prom erupts into a chaotic food fight, Randy and Julie escape into a waiting limo, which drives them off to an ending seemingly cribbed from The Graduate as they smile shyly at each other while Julie, exercising her one remaining bit of agency, removes Tommy's bracelet from her wrist and throws it out the window. [FOOTNOTE 3]

    Originality is clearly not this movie's strong point, but if you are a fan of teen movies, it is a fairly enjoyable assemblage of tropes, dressed in their 80s finest and set to some rad tunes. [FOOTNOTE 4] As the first stop on my Long Day's Journey into Cage, it was interesting to see his manic energy and smoldering intensity fighting against the restraints of the genre. While Deborah Foreman sticks to the standard giggles and sighs of a smitten teen, Cage ratchets up the emotions until he borders on creepy, staring into her eyes with unabashed ardor. The scene where he serves burgers and fries to Julie and her friends while wearing a chef's outfit is Cage at his finest-- he is bounding with barely contained energy, doing a crazed impression of a Southern drawl, and when Tommy complains that he forgot to bring his burger, you do not know whether Randy will laugh it off or pull a gun on him. This is a testament to Cage's talent: in a completely by-the-numbers movie, he is entirely unpredictable.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Interesting fashion sidenote: Throughout this scene, Randy appears to be wearing an American flag lapel pin. Presumably it is somehow punkish and ironic but with the red shirt he could easily be vying for a spot as McCain's running mate.

2. One of the more genius touches to this movie are Julie's parents, a pair of hippies who run a health food store and are given enough screen time to smoke pot, do yoga, listen to sitar music, and reminisce about Woodstock. Julie and her parents have a generally supportive, loving relationship, but the generation gap is present as Julie pines embarassedly "[health food's] so uncool. why can't they own a Pizza Hut or something?" 

3.  The Graduate's influence also evident in the competition between Julie's friend Loryn with her mother over the affections of high school student/grocery delivery boy Skip, a subplot which frankly, the less said about the better.

4. The soundtrack is rife with classic 80s New Wave music, but most amazing is a relatively obscure track Johnny are you queer?  performed live at prom by Josie Cotton.

LIKE, OMIGOD YOU GUYS: Can't get enough Valley Girl? Check out MGM's upcoming musical remake of the film, due out in 2011.

Hollywood is no stranger to controversy, but it has produced perhaps no more consistently polarizing figure than Nicolas Cage.  Any website devoted to him quickly devolves into a  Hatfield and McCoy-esque feud in which the commenters' love for/hatred of Cage is expressed in increasingly exclamatory lists of his movie titles (i.e. "OMG, Adaptation!" "OH YEAH???GHOST RIDER!!!") which are eventually supplanted by posts expressing the wish that the other commenters would get stranded on a desert island and die. 

Even when one can find slightly meatier debate, it is hard to know what to think. Depending on what you read, he is either a hack with "next to no talent" or an Oscar winner with "great charisma"; an actor who bravely breaks down genre conventions or who robotically plays the same character in every movie; a man whose hair looks like he stapled a dead muskrat to his forehead or one who is "soooo fucken hott".  

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Cage's first starring movie role (as high-school rebel Randy in 1983's Valley Girl) and he has been working prolifically ever since, with over 50 released films under his belt and another nine in production. In honor of his silver anniversary on the silver screen, I am embarking on a quest: to watch every Nicolas Cage movie ever made, in chronological order. Some I have seen; most I have not. Some I expect to enjoy; others I am already dreading.  By doing this I hope to cut through both the vitriol and adoration and get some answers. Firstly to the question underlying all Cage debate: Is he a good actor with terrible taste or a bad actor who occasionally gets lucky? But I also intend to examine issues raised by a film-by-film analysis of his entire career: How does his take on fatherhood change from Raising Arizona to Matchstick Men? Which does he play more often, a con man or a hit man?  What happened to Las Vegas in between Honeymoon in and Leaving?

On the war-torn boards of IMDb, one commenter posted a plaintive request for unpartisan discourse: "if ur in luv wit the guy leave, if u absolutely hate him leave... wut do some of u unbiased ppl think?"   I think it is about time we find out.