A Night with Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage

After looking at all of the photos that I took last night at The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, I almost feel compelled to do a collage series entitled, "The Many Faces of Nicolas Cage." 

David and I had a great time seeing "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call-New Orleans" last night. Director Werner Herzog and actor Nicolas Cage were in attendance, actually arriving before the film started. It's a rare opportunity to watch a film (35mm, yay!) with cast and crew in attendance so we jumped when tickets went on sale. It was a bit of a difficult decision as Robert Altman's Retrospective at UCLA (with Elliott Gould and others from the Nashville cast and crew in person) was also last night. (I later found out that Mel Brooks was at Cinefamily as a surprise host at a tribute to the late, great Sid Ceasar. What a rare Trifecta of a Night!)

Cage spoke a lot about the importance of thinking outside of the box (what he's doing with his fingers in the second photo.) He also mentioned that he may have possibly watched too many Daffy Duck cartoons as a kid (not possible.) Herzog said that if you want to be a great filmmaker that you need to read a lot and not film books. He mentioned specifically Virgil's The Georgics: A Poem of the Land and J.A. Baker's The Peregrine. It was one hell of an inspiring night.

Herzog's Rogue Film School (well worth reading regardless as to whether or not you want to work in film)

By the way, if you're in L.A., Nicolas Cage is coming back to the Aero on Sunday for his latest film, Joe.

Oh, life in Los Angeles...