Nicolas Cage has pulled off some wild stunts throughout his storied career, but learning to stand up on a surfboard for his new movie proved more difficult than stealing the Declaration of Independence.
In The Surfer (now in theaters), Cage plays an unnamed businessman who returns to his Australian hometown in hopes of fulfilling his dream of buying back the beach house he grew up in. Without spoiling too much, suffice it to say that despite the film’s title and his character’s obsession with the pastime, Cage does not do much surfing on screen.
While that’s mostly due to the script, which sees the actor descend into near-madness as a group of local bullies prevents him from getting in the water (“Dont live here, don’t surf here”), there is a moment at the end where it seems we might finally get to see the National Treasure star carving up the waves.
“Lorcan and I talked at length about it. He knows that I wish I could have gotten to that point,” Cage tells Entertainment Weekly of his conversations with the film’s director, Lorcan Finnegan.
While the actor “loves the way the movie ends” and “wouldn’t change a frame,” he admits he dreamed of recreating a surf scene from 1979’s Big Wednesday.
“I seem to remember in my mind’s eye, Jan-Michael Vincent on the board and then the board wiping across the frame…. It was so beautiful in the water with the wiping of the board and then landing on its face in slow motion,” he says. “I thought, gee, I really want to get that shot, but I didn’t have the time to get my skills to the point where we could do it.”
That wasn’t for lack of effort, as evidenced by paparazzi shots of his training, which, Cage complains, only captured his wipeouts. “They didn’t get the one shot of me standing on the board,” he jokes.
Not only did the actor have limited time to learn, but he was also hindered by Mother Nature. “We had things like weather conditions and believe it or not, shark reports and things, all that s—,” Cage says.
Still, the actor confesses, he hasn’t had much luck hanging ten in the past.
“I have surfed, but every time I’ve attempted surfing, I’ve been pounded to smithereens,” he says with a laugh. “I surfed down on Sunset Beach. When I was trying to learn, my teacher gave me a shortboard. I said, ‘Look, I want a long board.'”
But even with the more substantial board, the ocean got the best of him. “I just got pounded and literally got stuck in the rip tide, and they said they saw my board, they call it ‘tombstone,’ like that triangle top,” he says, pantomiming the tip of his board sticking straight up out of the water.
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“I’m climbing up the leash as I’m somersaulting, and I could have died,” he continues. “Now I have a young kid, I don’t know if I want to do it anymore.”
But just like his character, Cage isn’t ready to give up the dream.
“The goal,” he says, “is to retire, surf, drink red wine, and eat spaghetti.”
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