David Lynch has been breaking our balls, well, pretty much forever, but particularly so in recent months with the ridiculous saga of the Twin Peaks revival. Suggestion: maybe don’t emphasize the year that a show is coming out—or the perfection of the twenty-five years later thing—if you’re not really gonna be able to pull through? All this impatience really says, though, is that we miss you, David, and are simply tired of the ongoing gap in your filmmaking. The digital era needs Lynch-ian commentary. Enough stalling.
As these issues tend to work out, it appears that the forces of nature have heard our PBR-infused calls, with the great land of Las Vegas providing us with a Lynch film all its own this morning. Consider: the One True God himself, Nicolas Cage, reprising his role as Sailor Ripley from Lynch’s Wild at Heart, toiling with living B-movie character Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe. Consider: Cage, dressed in a blue suit, mid-struggle, moving from anger to concern, smothering Neil in a drunken embrace. Consider: Cage, reaching his Nouveau Shamanic limits—limits which we know to be deep—yelling the heartbreaking line, “I fucking love you—stop this shit now!”
Is it worth ruining this moment with background? Do you really want to know? TMZ and its team of reliable journalists are reporting that the altercation started when a woman asked Cage for an autograph inside the Aria Hotel, located in the heart of the Vegas Strip. This led Neil to respond accordingly—by pulling the woman to the ground. Nicolas Cage, voice of reason, then pulled Neil outside in a tussle. It’s the late afternoon. The planet continues to spin into an abyss. Camera phones are turned on.
The whole affair reminds me of another essential—and absurd—celebrity fistfight: Rip Torn vs. Norman Mailer during the production of Maidstone. Lines between fiction and reality have perhaps never been mixed with such complexity before or since. Watching the two struggle in the grass, children screaming next to the chaos, is one of those videos that will make you question your own sanity. Could this clip be explained with more context? Nope, incredibly weird shit just happens sometimes. Alcohol and fame is also usually involved.
Nic Cage fighting Vince Neil isn’t really a moment that you can prepare yourself for. And like David Lynch movies, it’s futile to attempt to throw meaning at it that isn’t there. Sometimes all you can do is pull over, and turn it up.
(via Stereogum)
