Nicolas Cage

If you're not a journalist, you probably don't realise this. But you rarely get to sit down alone to interview movie stars. Directors, yes, particularly if they're not American. Movie stars, no - or very rarely. Nicolas Cage, never. Cage swung through Berlin this weekend on the tail end of a press junket for 8mm. Press junkets are a bit like confession, but there are eight, 10, 15 priests and only one sinner. Plus the sinner tells you only good things, which kinda takes the fun out of it. And they take place in beige-coloured hotel rooms, not draughty wooden confessionals. But communion is given: Coca-Cola and choccy biscuits. And Nicolas Cage.

I read this morning in one of the local papers that Cage is cold and unemotional, not like he is in 8mm. Not just cold, but eiskalt - a robot, even. Well, let me say that keeping cool with the sorts of questions he was being fed yesterday is close to Oscar-winning territory.

"Do you like the snow in Berlin? Have you thrown any snowballs?"

Cage laughs politely, makes the obvious remark (that it doesn't snow much in southern California) and says, sure, he'd like to throw a snowball. But doesn't. Not much snow in the Palace.

Then there is the guy who keeps asking the same question: what's it like to have all this power? What's it like to be a superstar? What's it like to be in big box-office blockbusters? Different formulae, always the same question.

Not surprisingly, he gets the formula answer: "It's important when you consider that big action movies provide a release for many people; they can go and get their mind off their problems for two hours and just escape. I think that's cogent. That's also sort of the main force of my business - the main industry, which is the box-office industry. It also enables me to have the power to green-light movies like 8mm and Leaving Las Vegas. That's sort of the way it works."

Then there's the guy for whom the deal is telling Cage about the other films of which 8mm reminds him. Psycho, for starters ("by Alfred Hitchcock," he explains helpfully). Because of the character of Machine, the masked super-sadist who lives with his mother.

"That's a new one," says Cage, politely.

"And Death Wish, with Charles Bronson." Cage sighs. Here we go, down Conspiracy Boulevard, where Hollywood movies endorse violence, recommending it as the solution to all problems. Where movies don't tell stories, they teach lessons. And audiences are too stupid to tell the difference. Aren't they lucky that there are critics to enlighten them?

"I would say that this is really a character study of a man who has gone over the edge. I'm not trying to make a statement or a message; I'm just drawing a picture of a personality," says Cage, in studiedly neutral tones &emdash; eiskalt, if you will. "That's what I look for in a work. I'm interested in journeys, in characters that go through a transformation. I'm also fascinated with subject matter that seems to speak on a very human level, dealing with some of the flaws that we have as people, whether it be alcoholism in Leaving Las Vegas or violence in 8mm. I'm trying to understand it better, as an actor, just for my own edification."

"What do you think about pornography?" (It is one of the rules of a press junket that each question must be on a subject as radically different as possible from the one before.)

Cage looks at his hands. I am reminded of a director friend who once listed for me the actors who would go out on the road and work for a picture, as opposed to those who thought they were too important to do so. Cage is out working now.

"Not being a specialist on the subject," he says carefully, "I will say that it would be unfair to suggest that 8mm is pointing the finger at pornography. I think the subject it deals with is a much smaller subculture that exists in the big cities: S&M underworlds and things like that.

"There are many different levels to pornography, obviously, from something as benign as phone sex to something as repulsive as child pornography. It's an $11-billion-a-year industry in the US. That means there's a lot of lonely people out there."

Finally, someone throws him a curveball. "I was talking with Mike Figgis yesterday," says a young man with a bright pink microphone. "He says he would like to cast you in one of his movies, but your salary is too high."

"I don't know where Mike is coming from with that," says Cage. "That's fine if he wants to say that. But he knows as well as I do that I'll work with him for $200,000, which is what I did for Leaving Las Vegas at a time when I was making $4 million a movie. I've just worked with Martin Scorsese for a fraction of what I normally make.

"I don't understand why he said that. I sent him scripts. I sent him Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the Cassavetes movie, which I want to remake with him. And I heard he's interested in doing it, so I don't really know why he's saying that. I'm sorry about that.

"Actually, I want to work with Mike, or with any young film-maker that's got a project that they're excited about. And they should not expect that I'm going to charge them a full salary. I've always made a point that art films or independent movies are as important to me as anything else."

I bet we all used the Mike Figgis bit in our pieces.