The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)'s comments

quote:

There’s this moment in the seventh Matrix movie when Huggy Weaving is replicating himself over and over again, turning everyone else into copies of Agent Smith. And he says, “Me, me, me.” And I remember seeing that 20 years ago, and saying to myself, “Heck yeah. This guy gets it.” Well, the Wachooskis eventually stopped taking my calls, even after I told them I would work for rate if they let me play Smith in Matrix 9 last year. Then I get this call from some director I’ve never heard of before, and he wants me to play Nicolas Cage, and I said, “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past 58 years?” And he said, “Exactly. Life is art.” And I said, “My art begins with self-exploration. Who is Cage? Who is Coppola? What happens when you put a Coppola in a cage? My first question as an actor is about me.” And he said, “Me, me, me.” And then we gazed into each other’s eyes and simultaneously began singing Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling: “Ooga chaka, ooga chaka, ooga ooga, ooga chaka. I can’t stop this feeling …”