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People leaned forward a little.
Plot-guessing and other side chatter ceased.
The character of Longlegs is not spectacularly gross or overtly designed.
Hes one of those omniscient-seeming, cop-taunting, only-in-the-movies serial-killer types, but odder looking than most.
You dont see Longlegss entire face in the prologue, but Cage got the audience lean-in there as well.
In doing so, hes gained new and appreciative audiences via midnight showings and the circulation of memes.
His souls still dancin!).
This kind of calculatedly tone-clashing performance is always risky.
When it doesnt work, its like releasing a ferret in a beauty parlor.
But when it does work, its like releasing a ferret in a beauty parlor.
Whats the distinction between a big performance that works and one that doesnt?
Its woe-is-me rock-and-roll played on a kazoo.
His first major performance right after that, as H.I.
McDonough inRaising Arizona, is mostly beloved now, even though its no smaller than his work inPeggy Sue.
He conceived of the character as an outlaw Woody Woodpecker.
Cage and Perkins are drawing on a lot of horror, fantasy, and crime tropes inLonglegs.
Perkins, for his part, is creating a Freudian cocktail from autobiographical elements.
My father died in 1992.
That was a strange time as it’s possible for you to imagine.Silence of the Lambshit us.
I was turning 18.
All of those things were a perfect storm of that stuff.
There are also references inLonglegsto DantesInferno, the Book of Revelation, and Lou ReedsTransformer.
The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me.
But whenever anybody asks Cage about his acclaim, he tends to pivot to humility.
Theyre breaking free from If its quiet and minimal, its great.
They can liberate themselves and use their voices and gestures and go bigger.
Cage hated that, and he subsequently said that he and LaBute intended for the film to be funny.
The question Should I be laughing at this?
is a key component of many modes of popular art.
Cage has spent his career prompting it.
