What links ‘Nick Cage’ to David Lynch’s Dune and an all-time turkey from Adam Sandler?

Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Ronald Grant

Being Nicolas Cage

The cult of Cage has reached the point where he can star in an action comedy playing a fictional version of himself. In a forthcoming film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, “Nick Cage” is paid $1m to appear at the birthday of a billionaire superfan. It doesn’t go smoothly.

In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage appears at the party of a rich superfan … Photograph: Getty Images

Stinging rebuke

There’s an ignoble history of famous people playing for cash at parties of billionaires and autocrats. Recently Sting struck a damning blow in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine by reportedly declaring he would never again perform for a Russian billionaire, having done so at a 2016 wedding. Sting’s having a good war: he co-wrote an op-ed with Bernard-Henri Lévy, Sean Penn and Salman Rushdie, his biggest collaboration since All for Love with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams.

… as has been done in the past by Sting … Photograph: Getty Images

Grimes scene

In 1984 the then-Police man appeared in David Lynch’s Dune. The film has one fan in Grimes, who, according to a revealing interview, cornered Sting to discuss it. Grimes’ 2010 album Geidi Primes was inspired by Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic. In the same interview Grimes revealed she had a second child with Elon Musk. The billionaire formerly married, divorced, remarried and re-divorced the actor Talulah Riley, whose debut film role was as Mary Bennet in Joe Wright’s cantering Pride and Prejudice.

… who appeared in Dune, which inspired an album by Grimes, who has two children with Elon Musk, who was previously married to Talulah Riley, who starred in Pride and Prejudice by Joe Wright … Photograph: Alamy

Cobblers

Wright’s latest film is a “solemn” take on Cyrano de Bergerac with Peter Dinklage in the title role. Dinklage’s breakthrough was in The Station Agent, the 2003 directorial debut of Tom McCarthy. Sitting oddly in the McCarthy catalogue is “misguided” Adam Sandler flop The Cobbler, which he directed in 2014; a year later McCarthy made double-Oscar-winning Spotlight. “I loved that movie,” he says of The Cobbler.

… whose latest film stars Peter Dinklage, who broke through with The Station Agent, directed by Tom McCarthy, who also directed The Cobbler, starring Adam Sandler … Photograph: Getty Images

Marriage stories

Lesser loved in the Sandler oeuvre is 2000’s Little Nicky, “which will make many of us despair”, according to the Guardian’s reviewer. Among its cast is Patricia Arquette. In 1999 she appeared in second-division Scorsese drama Bringing Out the Dead with soon-to-be ex-husband Nicolas Cage. It appears the weight of being married to Cage is often unbearable. He wed for the fifth time last year.

… who was also in Little Nicky, alongside Patricia Arquette, who was once married to Nicolas Cage. Photograph: Getty Images

Pairing notes

Watch Revisit the beginnings of the Cage myth with 1983 teen comedy Valley Girl, a surprise favourite of Quentin Tarantino.

Drink Given Cage is part of the Coppola family, try a bottle from uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s winery: a chardonnay in the Director’s Cut range is £21.99.

Illustration: Guardian Design